MAC Mini late 2014 upgrade to Samsung EVO 1T SSD

The Mac mini 2014 has potential support for two different types of storage drive.

It can support a standard 2.5" SATA drive (spinning hard drive or SSD), and it can also support an M2 PCI SSD. This M2 PCI SSD uses Apple's proprietary connector and is therefore slightly different to the normal M2 connector.

So you could fit a Samsung EVO 850 SSD which is a 2.5" SATA SSD, or you could fit a Samsung Evo 950 which is an M2 PCI SSD but you would also need an adapter to convert from the Apple proprietary connector to a standard M2 connector.

Note: At least in Mac Pro models and likely all Mac models the Samsung Evo 960 Pro is causing problems and should be avoided.

Note: An M2 PCI SSD is nearly four times as fast as a SATA SSD.

Note: The Mac mini 2014 is one of the most difficult to fit an upgrade to, the 2012 is much easier but only supports SATA drives. The Mac mini 2018 is more difficult than the 2014 in that it is completely impossible!

You may want to check this video first since you pretty much

need to completely dissemble the Mini to replace the drive:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac+mini+Late+2014+Hard+Drive+Replacement/32815

An alternative to this would be to get either a USB3 or Thunderbolt2 enclosure,

put the SSD in it, clone your internal drive to it and then set it as a boot volume.

The advantages are:

-No need to open the Mini.

-Only takes as long as formatting the new drive, clone the internal drive,

and reboot.

-No possibility of damaging any internal components of the Mini.

Also, it will be nearly as fast as it would be installed internally, especially

with if you use the Thunderbolt approach, though the Thunderbolt approach

will be a bit pricey.

To answer your question yes, that's a 2.5" internal drive that can replace your 500GB HDD. I added a 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD to my 2014 Mac mini.

My Mini came with a Fusion Drive (128GB blade SSD and 1TB HDD). I wanted to split the drives and had the Samsung lying around. I replaced the HDD with the Samsung SSD. I already had the tools to open the Mac Mini for the drive replacement.

Also forgot to mention, OWC has a kit with PCIe SSD to add on

their PCIe card to a 2014 MacMini that does not have a PCIe

drive, which is much easier than replacing the HDD. Currently,

their 1TB kit is for sale at 1/2 price:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/S3DAPB4MM10K/

OWC is a Mac centric vendor and have some of the most reliable

upgrades for Macs available.

You can use the current drive as backup or just additional data storage.