I had two 1tb 2.5" drives installed in my Mac Mini as Raid 0 over the last year but I wasn't really happy with the performance and was running out of the 2tb space as its my media centre anyway, so I decide to "upgrade" to a 3tb external drive and a Vertex 3 SSD for the system.
Unfortunately with no USB 3 and no affordable Thuderbolt externals my drive was limited to 2.0 - fine in general for 1080p playback but a bit of a burden when transferring files.
What bothered me more is that there was now a spare Sata 3 bus sat inside the Mac Mini doing nothing. I knew it wouldn't be a clean looking solution to access it, but I want to try.
However, Sata "should" be dumb, right? Its dumb inside my iMac where I have dual SSD's and a 2tb drive all fitted taking power from different to the ones that supply the data. So I figured I could route out a sata data extension cable to the 3TB drive, and take the power from the external enclosure (as I presume the Mac Mini won't give enough juice to power a 3tb 3.5" external drive?)
But for some reason its not seeing anything connected in this method, I've tried all sorts - different cables, different methods. It won't see anything on the sata bus unless its powering and receiving data from the same drive. I thought it might see its not powering anything so I even got it to power up a 2.5" drive while the data cable was connected to the externally powered 3.5" drive but nothing.
Anyone had a success or can think of a way to make use of the spare sata port so I don't have to resort to USB 2.0 - better still does anyone know the max power output of a 2011 Mac Mini sata port, just incase it is capable of powering my 3tb drive direct??
Unfortunately with no USB 3 and no affordable Thuderbolt externals my drive was limited to 2.0 - fine in general for 1080p playback but a bit of a burden when transferring files.
What bothered me more is that there was now a spare Sata 3 bus sat inside the Mac Mini doing nothing. I knew it wouldn't be a clean looking solution to access it, but I want to try.
However, Sata "should" be dumb, right? Its dumb inside my iMac where I have dual SSD's and a 2tb drive all fitted taking power from different to the ones that supply the data. So I figured I could route out a sata data extension cable to the 3TB drive, and take the power from the external enclosure (as I presume the Mac Mini won't give enough juice to power a 3tb 3.5" external drive?)
But for some reason its not seeing anything connected in this method, I've tried all sorts - different cables, different methods. It won't see anything on the sata bus unless its powering and receiving data from the same drive. I thought it might see its not powering anything so I even got it to power up a 2.5" drive while the data cable was connected to the externally powered 3.5" drive but nothing.
Anyone had a success or can think of a way to make use of the spare sata port so I don't have to resort to USB 2.0 - better still does anyone know the max power output of a 2011 Mac Mini sata port, just incase it is capable of powering my 3tb drive direct??