Can you upgrade a mac mini 2012 into 3-4tb internal hard drive? And have 3 OS?

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Can you upgrade a mac mini 2012 into 3-4tb internal hard drive? And have 3 OS?

I ask because i have many movies,games and whatever that i want to have in one computer that is easy to move and don't take a lot of space.

Right now all the below is taking up much space and is a mish mash of Consoles, cables, games and the like, and i am going crazy!

And all of this is a lot when you are going to your friends and have to cary 3-5 movingboxes filled with games, Wires, handcontrollers, cd,dvd,game packeges/boxes, harddrives, and all cables to each of everything, powercables, connection cables.

And i heard that mac mini i small and can handel the most in computing, but i am unsure if it can take all the program and games i want that i have some writen below and then i want to have insted of many external or 1 big external harddrive i want 1 internal instead with 3 os and all below.

But is this possible to fit a 3-4tb harddrive in a mac mini 2012 and have 3 os, have all game form writen below and programs?

Over 1.000 movies,

a lot of music,

lots of monument,

lots of pictures and photos,

lots of lots of old games like -

GB:GBC;GBA;NES;SNES, Atari 2600, MAME, Neo Geo,, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis), TurboGrafX, ZX Spectrum, Nintendo 64, Nintendo 8bit, Super Nintendo,

XBOX, PS1,PS2

Windows 95/98, windows vista, Old mac games

And old mac and Windows program that i want to use.

Examples of pc/mac games : Warcraft 1,2, Starcraft 1, Diablo 1,2 Age of empires 1,2 Heroes of might and magic 1,2,3,4,5 + expansions

left 4 dead 2

program: Photoshop cs 6, VLC, Microsoft office - word, PowerPoint, Excel

And then have 3 difrent OS

Window Vista

MAC OSX

Raspbian

Posted on Jul 30, 2014 11:03 AM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Jul 30, 2014 11:10 AM in response to vinderius

If you have adequate storage then it may be better to use Virtualization Engines to accommodate multiple OSes.

1. Vista may no longer be supported via Bootcamp, but Vmware, VirtualBox and Parallels should support it.

2. Putting a large HDD can produce heat, which can cause issues. Large SSDs (2-3TB) are priced out of the consumer reach right now.

3. You may want to consider some Cloud services rather than carrying 'hard' machines around.

4. For a Mini, I suggest you wait for the awaited 2014 version to see if it does provide some relief for your needs.

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Answer 2

vinderius Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 30, 2014 11:39 AM in response to Loner T

1 Vista was an exempel for a windows os, i think that i want to use either windows 7 or 8.

2 what kind of damage or issues can it make and Whats the diffrent between 500gb and 3-4tb in producent heat if you use them the same, beacuse i have no ide'?

3 i don't want to have some cloud service becasue i want everything in one place ; in the computer.

4 i asked beacuse i can buy a mac mini 2012 cheap from a friend and ask so i can sell all the consoles and games whitch i wrote before and then stuff all in one place

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Jul 30, 2014 12:23 PM in response to vinderius

The 2012 Mini can take two 2.5" disk drives. The server version of the Mini has two 1TB hard drives.

Two 7200rpm drives will produce heat , so larger drives tend to be 5400rpm (bit slower) than the 7200 rpm drives. You can look at the thermal specifications.

http://www.hgst.com/hard-drives/mobile-drives/9.5mm-mobile-hard-drives/travelsta r-5K1500

http://www.seagate.com/products/laptop-mobile-storage/laptop-internal-drives/lap top-hdd/

One option is to use a SSD/HDD combination. So a 512-1TB SSD, and a 2TB HDD.

3-4TB drives will come in 3.5" which the Mini cannot take.

You can also look at Hybrid drives like the Seagate SSHDs.

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