Using the Mac Mini as an external hard drive

Hi Kozmo Kramer-

Greetings and welcome to the Apple boards


Try this: How to use FireWire target disk mode

Luck-

-DaddyPaycheck

That's a rather expensive external hard drive you have there Kozmo.

It can be done. You will need to partition the minis hard drive if you want to also use it as a computer. This means that the drive is split into 2 or more areas and would then appear in the Finder as if they were physically separate drives.

Consider that the mini probably came with an 80 or 120 GB hard drive. If you make two partitions, one should be at least 40 GB for the minis operating system and anything else you want to run on it. As your Book gets fuller, you might find yourself painted into a corner, when you have more on it than can be backed up.

Personally, I would get a real external FireWire drive, such as a fast LaCie with 1000 GB, partition that, have plenty of room to back up both computers and space for lots of other stuff too.

Kozmo, could you provide a bit more information on why you want to use a Mini this way?

Very large external hard drives can be had for a fraction of the cost of a Mini. And the largest drive that Apple sells for the Mini is only 160 Gig, though your Mini more like has an 80 or 120 gig drive.

I'm asking "why" because I'm wondering if your question might actually be a little different from "I have a new mac mini that I would like to use as an external hard drive to back-up (with TIme Machine)".

Generally people who come here and want to "use their mini as a hard drive" actually are wanting to use their MacBook as a monitor and keyboard for their Mini.