Out of hard drive space in 2012 Mac Mini, how to upgrade?

[theanimala]

I have a late 2012 i7 Mac Mini, 16GB ram, 1TB internal hard drive and I added a 256GB SSD drive when I first bought it. Made the 256GB the boot drive, 1TB internal holds main storage (which now only has 341GB free).

I am getting notifications that my 256GB SSD is out of room. I would prefer to not use an external HD as I have had issues with external devices in the past. I'm thinking I would like to replace the 256GB SSD with a 1TB SSD, but I do not know how I can get all of my data to the new drive. Do I just temp swap out the 1TB HD, put the SSD in its place, do some sort of a disk clone, then replace the 256SSD with the new drive and put the 1TB hard drive back in? Not sure the best way to get this resolved...

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[itsOver9000]

Look at CarbonCopyCloner for cloning the 256GB SSD to a 1TB SSD:
https://bombich.com

If you have access to an external enclosure or dock for the 1TB SSD that's what I'd use to clone the 256GB SSD over. Otherwise your method should be fine just you have to go through the hassle of tearing down the mini and swapping drives twice.

Is 340GB free on your 1TB data HDD enough for you for the foreseeable future? I see 2TB 2.5" drives are pretty cheap - $84 for 2TB Seagate on Amazon right now. You might think about swapping the 1TB HDD for a 2TB as well since you'll already have the mini opened up. Just a thought.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I am getting notifications that my 256GB SSD is out of room. I would prefer to not use an external HD as I have had issues with external devices in the past."

Ummm...... Ummmmm.....

Where are your external BACKUP drives?

If you don't have any, you'd better rethink your position and get some soon.

What happens when the internal drives fail?

The internal drives WILL fail, at some point in time.

 

[theanimala]

Look at CarbonCopyCloner for cloning the 256GB SSD to a 1TB SSD:
https://bombich.com

If you have access to an external enclosure or dock for the 1TB SSD that's what I'd use to clone the 256GB SSD over. Otherwise your method should be fine just you have to go through the hassle of tearing down the mini and swapping drives twice.

Is 340GB free on your 1TB data HDD enough for you for the foreseeable future? I see 2TB 2.5" drives are pretty cheap - $84 for 2TB Seagate on Amazon right now. You might think about swapping the 1TB HDD for a 2TB as well since you'll already have the mini opened up. Just a thought.

Thanks! And that is some great advice on the 2TB drive. Sounds like a great idea, might as well do both at the same time...

OP wrote:
"I am getting notifications that my 256GB SSD is out of room. I would prefer to not use an external HD as I have had issues with external devices in the past."

Ummm...... Ummmmm.....

Where are your external BACKUP drives?

If you don't have any, you'd better rethink your position and get some soon.

What happens when the internal drives fail?

The internal drives WILL fail, at some point in time.

My external BACKUP drive is a NAS that I manually backup several systems to. External USB connected drives to my original iMac and current Mac Mini just seem to "disappear" from OSX. In addition to my NAS, I pay for a cloud based backups of my systems as well in case I lose the entire house. Figure I'm as protected as you can get...

 

[DonCarlos]

Thanks! And that is some great advice on the 2TB drive. Sounds like a great idea, might as well do both at the same time...


My external BACKUP drive is a NAS that I manually backup several systems to. External USB connected drives to my original iMac and current Mac Mini just seem to "disappear" from OSX. In addition to my NAS, I pay for a cloud based backups of my systems as well in case I lose the entire house. Figure I'm as protected as you can get...

Well the issue of running out of room is pretty common in all computers. I finally got sick of it and invested in a WD 3 GB external (USB 3.0) as a Time Machine backup, and am using an older WD Studio (FW 800) for Photo library. I moved all of my photos and current downloaded photos are sent to the WD external, just by accessing the Photo icon. Getting you photo library can gain you a lot of room (mine for example is over 200 GB of photos). Keeping you operating system SSD lean and small, helps it to run much better and faster. The externals are always hooked up to mac and are accessible when I turn on the machine if needed. IMHO only WD externals are reliable and play well with Macs. Time Machine works pretty slick and allows you to access anything.

 

[theanimala]

Look at CarbonCopyCloner for cloning the 256GB SSD to a 1TB SSD:
https://bombich.com

If you have access to an external enclosure or dock for the 1TB SSD that's what I'd use to clone the 256GB SSD over. Otherwise your method should be fine just you have to go through the hassle of tearing down the mini and swapping drives twice.

Is 340GB free on your 1TB data HDD enough for you for the foreseeable future? I see 2TB 2.5" drives are pretty cheap - $84 for 2TB Seagate on Amazon right now. You might think about swapping the 1TB HDD for a 2TB as well since you'll already have the mini opened up. Just a thought.

Just wanted to say thanks again. I ended up upgrading my 256GB SSD to a 996GB SSD, while at the same time upgrading my 1TB HD to a 2GB HD. I should have plenty of space in the mini to last me another 3 years or so. I still can't believe how fast this little machine from 2012 is...