Best Setup for New Mini

Hi all, thanks so much for all of the help so far - I love my 2 mac minis and I've benefitted from so much great advice from this forum.

So I, like some others, just purchased a 2012 i7 quad after a long wait. I've wanted to upgrade my 2009 c2d for about a year now. My c2d has 8 gb of ram, and 128 ssd. Normal tasks (internet browsing, easy stuff) it's very quick. I've always ran a FW800 external enclosure with 3 TB WD black drive for my iTunes library and LR/PS files. I have hundreds of GBs of photos.

So I need some advice on my new machine. I def will max out the ram (16), and will absolutely install an SSD (will purchase new one because my wife inherited my old mini so the drive stays in it).

Given the fact that my new mini has the stock 5,400 1 TB HD - any advice on what i should do? Should I try to do a DIY fusion? Or should I just replace the HD and pull out the 5,400 altogether? Or a third option would be to add an SSD, then leave the 1 TB in for time machine backups. . .

I'm definitely using my external Black because I need the storage - just wanting to hear opinions on how you all would set up the rest.

Thank you in advance!

 

Best Setup for New Mini

Thank you! Plus I'd get the added benefit of silencing the mini (although the Black in the external is quite noisy).

I might end up doing exactly as you've described.