Has anyone added a second drive to their Mac mini? I saw the procedure on OWC today and it looks pretty involved. however, adding a second SSD drive is very tempting. đ
I will be performing that task. I have already ordered the kit from OWC.
I can update here once iam done on Monday.
Awesome! Yes, please keep me posted. BTW, which SSD did you get?
I added a 2nd drive (SSD) to my Mac Mini (late-2012). It does seem very involved and complicated, but once you dive in and take your time, it's very easy. The OWC and iFixit instructions are wonderful. I now have a Fusion drive with the added SSD.
I did this in my Mid 2011 mini server a couple of weekends ago:
http://jeffnitschke.com/wordpress/2012/12/i-will-be-installing-a-ssd-in-my-macmi ni-this-weekend/
Which SSD did you get?
I got a 240GB Intel 330 Series SSD sata III drive from my brother for Christmas. I am really pleased with it
I have the 240gb intel 510 ssd.
Still waiting on the kit. Shoul arrive tomorrow. Panning to install 1tb with the 240gb ssd as fusion drive.
Got it installed and running
this website is greatly helpful
http://blog.macsales.com/15617-creating-your-own-fusion-drive
Followed the directions exactly to word and boom
I got a fusion setup with an SSD and 1TB
COOL!!
Fouad, brand, model, and size SSD did you purchase?
I mentioned it 3 posts above
I see that you got an OWC kit, but it doesn't say which size or model. đ
For a graphic design environment, which is what I have, it sounds like a Fusion Drive might not be the best option. I'd love to hear from anyone who has a graphic design business and has setup a Mac mini with a second drive in their office. Did you format both drives as a Fusion setup or decide to keep the OS and apps on the SSD and your client and data files on the hard drive, which sounds like it would work better with less chance of loss of data?
Having bought a late 2012 Mac Mini(6,2) i7 2.66GHZ with the standard 1TB 5400 HD and 4GB of RAM (base model) I immediately decided to install a Mercury Elite 6g 240GB SSD and up the RAM to 16GB. I received both shipments on the same day and had all my new toys in front of me. After following the video advice on OWCâs website for the installation of the second drive I started the mini and formatted the SSD to accept the OS from Recovery on the original HD. This MacMini shipped with 10.8.2 (12C2034) as the OS, the normal build of 10.8.2 is (12C60). Having used Recovery Disk Utility to format the SSD it came back with an error that DU couldât Repair. I went ahead and installed the OS on the SSD and the Mini booted normally from both drives. The issue I encountered with this setup was that iMovie encountered an âunexpected errorâ and would not save a completed project. I therefore decided to figure the drive issue out because I suspect the new Fusion File Management software didnât like my configuration with drives that Recovery DU saw as needing to be âfixedâ. After spending some time on the phone with both OWC and Apple Support I took the plunge and used Internet Recovery Disk Utility and allowed both drives to be âfixedâ after which DU created a Fusion Drive (Logical Drive) that I then ran Repair Disk on and it showed up as a single drive in DU. It works perfectly as described by Appleâs site:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446
Having checked the Link Speed and Negotiated Speed they both show as 6g so Iâm pleased not to have lost performance due to it being fuzed to a 3g 5400 drive. The biggest drawback is that Appleâs Fusion Management only allows for 1 additional partition and I would have preferred more than that.
I have sourced some additional information here:
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/05/undocumented-corestorage-commands/
If anyone has a factory Fusion Drive could you please post the Link and Negotiated Speeds of both drives? This information can be found in Apple > About This Mac > More Info⊠> System Report > Serial ATA and the drives should show up as discrete drives with their info listed separately.
You are correct on this.
When i finished my installation and booted from external HDD. Under disk utility both the SSD and 1TB hDD were in red. When i tried Disk utility to have them formatted it asked me to fix and i did.
Apple Disk Utility automatically combined them both as 1 Internal Drive.
I wasnt sure if thats how it was but i still went ahead with OWC procedure after it finished and it still showed as 1 Disk.
HAppy.
Under about this MAc and more info, i see Storage as MAss+Flash so its COOL!
2012 Mac mini-adding second SSD drive?
