Advice on internal/external storage options?

[oneinten]

Hi,

I currently have an internal 120GB and I'm considering my options for further storage. I want a large external drive to store all my music/pictures and videos on.

I was looking at the seagate expansion dekstop (3TB) drive, or possibly the USB 3.0 mybook studio as it's designed for mac (supposedly) but I don't want to use any rubbish software that comes pre-installed on the drive. Can you wipe any pre-installed crap that comes on a drive?

I feel confident in putting a second drive in the mini itself, but I don't think I have much purpose for it. I won't be planning on moving the mini anywere and I can either hide a large external drive or buy one that looks good, so putting a 1TB HDD inside the mini might be a bit of a waste of money.

I have a 500GB external 2.5 drive I will be using to keep backups of pictures/music in case thhe large external should ever fail.

The seagate expansion or mybook both look decent but have their fair share of bad reviews, anyone here use either of these?

 

[Fishrrman]

Another option:

Get a USB3/SATA docking station, and one or more "bare drives", and then swap them as per your own requirements.

These are VERY useful devices, bootable, and they can be had at downright cheap prices.

To see what's available, go to amazon.com and enter the following in the search box
USB3 SATA dock
…. plenty of hits will come up.

Advisory:
You should look for an external dock (or enclosure) with either of the following controller chips:
ASMedia 1051e
or
ASMedia 1053

These will enable the "SCSI over USB" protocols with USB3.

I use a plugable.com "lay-flat" dock with a 2012 Mini -- absolutely no problems at all.

 

[cxc273]

Yes, you can reformat an external drive and wipe out any pre-installed software.

I use a Mac Mini with an external drive as my media server. At some point, I plan on physically putting it with my home theater. Rather than buying an external drive from Western Digital or other vendor, I chose to buy the NewerTechnology MiniStack hard drive enclosure and a separate 3 TB internal hard drive.

At the end, it's a bit more pricey, but I like that I can swap in a larger drive at some point down the road and that the MiniStack matches the design aesthetic of the Mini. You can check out the MiniStack at http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack. They also make versions for the original Mac Mini, as well as a more expensive version, which I just purchased, that's equipped with a Blu-ray drive.