2010 Mac Mini Upgrade

[RUGGLES99]

I have the last Mac Mini 2010 with the superdrive. It's a base model that I figure I might as well upgrade to an SSD and 8gb ram. I don't need more than 250 gb, so what do you experts recommend. I was thinking of the crucial 8gb kit from amazon for the ram. But what about the SSD? and what else do i need to buy for the upgrade. i plan to use the old 320 gb hd as an external, so what do i need to get for that. i'm not doing the upgrade myself but having a mac repair place do it, so i want to show up with everything he needs. TIA

 

[yjchua95]

I have the last Mac Mini 2010 with the superdrive. It's a base model that I figure I might as well upgrade to an SSD and 8gb ram. I don't need more than 250 gb, so what do you experts recommend. I was thinking of the crucial 8gb kit from amazon. But what about the SSD? TIA

For the SSD, I'd suggest a Crucial BX 100 250GB. The BX drives offer great performance for a pretty low price, and they use MLC NAND.

Since it's a 2010 Mac, you don't need the fastest drives out there, because they would still be hobbled to SATA2 (3 Gb/s) speeds.

 

[grcar]

I was thinking of the crucial 8gb kit from amazon for the ram. But what about the SSD?

Crucial also sells SSDs.

 

[Maxx Power]

Be very careful with this Mac Mini. If yours is indeed the 2010 year model with the Nvidia chipset (check if yours has the Geforce 320m video card, if so, you have the MCP89 Nvidia chipset), you may find many SSDs are unwilling to work with the machine, either immediately or about a month or less into the usage. The symptoms usually include a down-negotation of the link from SATA II (3.0 Gbps) to SATA I (1.5 Gbps) before corruptions ensues.

I think the only thing consistently reputed to work was the Crucial M500s. Anything else sandforce/samsung/etc was less successful.

Please, do yourself a favor and look up the issues with Nvidia chipsets on Macs + SSDs. This has been a long-standing problem that plagues all Nvidia chipsets (MCP79/89) and users who wishes to upgrade to SSDs. I have only been able to get the Crucial M500 to work for myself, FYI.

 

[antz359]

I have the last Mac Mini 2010 with the superdrive. It's a base model that I figure I might as well upgrade to an SSD and 8gb ram. I don't need more than 250 gb, so what do you experts recommend. I was thinking of the crucial 8gb kit from amazon for the ram. But what about the SSD? and what else do i need to buy for the upgrade. i plan to use the old 320 gb hd as an external, so what do i need to get for that. i'm not doing the upgrade myself but having a mac repair place do it, so i want to show up with everything he needs. TIA

Hi
I have the same 2010 MM with 8Gb RAM plus a Samsung 840 Pro 256Gb (got it cheap), I have a no issues with speed it runs at SATA2 speeds. Format it before hand and you could clone the HDD to the SSD, I've used SuperDuper in the past with excellent results. It rooks, boot time is approx 30sec and apps open with very little delay. I also have Trim enabler and Onyx for maintenance. I have used Crucial SSD with no issues. I have a FW800 enclosure with a Cruical M4 256Gb that I used previously to having the SSD installed (as my boot drive)which I now use as a secondary drive with things I don't want on the main SSD plus a ready copy to boot with if something happens to the internal SSD, I also use the old 320Gb HDD as a Time Machine drive