Tonight I finally decided to put the SSD drive in my new Mini that showed up on Monday. I had been humming and hawing about it, debating between doing it and going with a USB 3.0 enclosure. I called the local Apple store and asked them very specifically, "if I put another hard drive in my Mini, will it void my warranty?" The guy put me on hold and went to ask the techs. He came back and said no, it won't void the warranty; it just won't cover the hard drive you put in. Naturally. So, I decided to go for it.
I used the OWC video as my guide. I had it playing on my iPad as I worked, so I could pause/rewind as needed. The entire process took about 20 minutes.
Now, these super-duper fragile connectors everybody is talking about. They aren't that fragile. I mean, yeah, they're fragile, but if you follow the video exactly and use the little plastic pry tool, they all come off easily enough, and go back on plenty easy as well. Just take your time. With the exception of the power supply connector, they all pop UP, so getting them loose is really quite simple.
I decided to move the 1TB drive to the bottom bay (which in hindsight was probably a dumb idea). To get everything to fit, I had to put the OWC cable on the 1TB drive and the original cable on the new drive (a Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD). I also had to move the "pins" from the old drive to the SSD. Those suckers are in TIGHT (with blue Lock-tite no less). I used a 5/16" box-end wrench on the end of the T8 torx tool to pop 'em loose.
When installing the rubber grommets into the second drive bracket, be very careful when working on the side of the bracket near the IR sensor. It's very easy to bump it.
That's pretty much it. Once done, I booted up from the original drive, ran Carbon Copy Cloner, and cloned it over to the SSD (after partitioning it). That took about a half hour, as I only had 60 gig of stuff on it so far.
Rob
I used the OWC video as my guide. I had it playing on my iPad as I worked, so I could pause/rewind as needed. The entire process took about 20 minutes.
Now, these super-duper fragile connectors everybody is talking about. They aren't that fragile. I mean, yeah, they're fragile, but if you follow the video exactly and use the little plastic pry tool, they all come off easily enough, and go back on plenty easy as well. Just take your time. With the exception of the power supply connector, they all pop UP, so getting them loose is really quite simple.
I decided to move the 1TB drive to the bottom bay (which in hindsight was probably a dumb idea). To get everything to fit, I had to put the OWC cable on the 1TB drive and the original cable on the new drive (a Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD). I also had to move the "pins" from the old drive to the SSD. Those suckers are in TIGHT (with blue Lock-tite no less). I used a 5/16" box-end wrench on the end of the T8 torx tool to pop 'em loose.
When installing the rubber grommets into the second drive bracket, be very careful when working on the side of the bracket near the IR sensor. It's very easy to bump it.
That's pretty much it. Once done, I booted up from the original drive, ran Carbon Copy Cloner, and cloned it over to the SSD (after partitioning it). That took about a half hour, as I only had 60 gig of stuff on it so far.
Rob
