SATA port multipliers on mac mini

Not if you want them internally. There's only room for two hard drives inside. I did a conversion on an earlier intel mini using an IDE-SATA adaptor as that machine had a SATA hard drive and IDE Combo drive.

Good question, I've been wondering the same thing.

Thinking about getting a Mac Mini, and Snake a sata cable to an external HD sata enclosure that houses multiple drives. The only catch, the sata port on the motherboard must support multiple ports.

Apple is really behind the curve on this, i know they are looking into the 'next big thing' port wise with the intel light-port-watchacallit?? but esata is here now and will be around for a long time to come.

Join the Apple Developer Connection?

Hi, I already have a Q running on this list.

I have started a project to tap into the SATA connection of the optical drive (Superdrive?) of my Mac mini.

I have knocked up the hardware, and tried it, but using a G-Tech 1 Tb drive eSATA, It won't recognise the drive.

I have connected the same drive via a Sonnet Tempo card on my G5, the cabling works, the drive mounted, I also hooked it up to my G5 Drive 'B' SATA connector, that mounted too.

I am wondering if the Mac mini is looking for a DVD Drive instead of a Hard Drive on that SATA port. Is there any way of explaining to the Mac mini it has a HD attached?

My eventual goal is to connect a 1 Tb G-Tech RAID 0 drive to give a bit of zip to my data loading, and for occasional video editing.

My understanding is the difference between SATA and eSATA is the design of the plug/socket SATA being non latching, eSATA being semi, or fully latching. I don't think there is any electronic, or digital control difference.

I noticed in the article "How Far Can You Push a Mac Mini" someone mentioned a poor contact being to blame for an initial lack of results. The connection does seem very tenuous, the connector has almost no grip, I have distorted the pins to give a bit more grip, but I am reluctant to do much more...

I am using a SATA to eSATA lead removed from a PCI Card backplate and a modified gender reversing connector Male-Male.

Similar to this:

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You may have to copy/paste the URL, I haven't figured how to do it properly yet.

This arrangement works with my G5 from the 'B' drive connector. I see no reason why it shouldn't work with the Mac mini optical drive connection.

I have tried a second time without success. It's not a huge issue, I would just like to crack it.

I am getting the idea a Mac Pro would be better suited for my needs and way of working. The Mac mini is an amazing little tool, but expansion is not it's strong point.

Message was edited by: Epochmaker