Mac Mini 2010 hard drive question

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macmini2010q Author

Level 1

4 points

Mac Mini 2010 hard drive question

Hi everyone,

Hoping someone can help me out here. I have a 2010 Mac Mini that has two har drives installed; one SSD and one HDD (this was done long ago).

My question for everyone is how do I know which bay each hard drive is installed in?

I've been reading that the upper hard drive slot has different specs than the lower drive.

Is there any way to verify that my SSD is in the faster drive port?

The SSD is the main boot drive, by the way.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very mcuh.

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Jun 21, 2020 11:07 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

woodmeister50

Level 7

21,063 points

Jun 22, 2020 4:31 AM in response to macmini2010q

From the "About this Mac..." popup, select "System Report.."

Once open select SATA/SATAExpresss. It will list all SATA

busses and devices and in each device listing there will be

a "Link Speed" and a "Negotiated Link Speed". The first is

what the Mini is capable of, the second is what the device

is capable of.

While I don't have the dual drive 2010 Mini, The CD drive and

the SSD I installed on both connections show that both links

are 3 Gigabit with the CD negotiating a 1.5 Gigabit speed.

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

91,636 points

Jun 22, 2020 6:58 AM in response to macmini2010q

Both bays in the 2010 and 2011 Mac Mini's are SATA ll 3G, so technically it does not matter which bay you put the SSD into.

Personally, I always like to put the warmer running HDD in the upper bay and the cooler running SSD in the lower bay of the 2010, 2011 and 2012 Mac Mini's.

At one time my 2010 Mac Mini had dual SSD/HDD drives, but currently it just has a 480GB SSD in the lower bay. My 2011 Mac Mini has an SSD in the lower bay and an HDD in the upper bay. One of my 2012's has dual SSD's and the other just has a large SSD.

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Mac Mini 2010 hard drive question

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