Clone drive of Mini using CD SATA port?

[donaldl43]

I'm thinking of upgrading my HDD on my new Mac Mini(2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo) and I'm wondering if this is possible. I would like to clone the old to the new without having to buy a USB or Firewire to SATA adapter. Would it be possible to disconnect the Super Drive(CD/DVD) and connect up the new drive, use Super Duper to clone, then replace the old with the new and reconnect the Super Drive?

I've searched the forums to see if anyone has tried this but I didn't find anything. I'm not even sure if there is a second SATA port that would work for a HDD. I know the Super Drive is a SATA because it's listed when I look at system info.

I've seen a lot of folks using USB or Firewire to do this so that's my backup plan but it would seem if I can get both drives connected this would be pretty straight forward.

 

[Makosuke]

Yes, this can be done, but unfortunately for you the Mini's internal optical drive connector is different from a standard SATA hard drive connector; iFixit has a takeapart guide that shows you what is required and how much work is involved:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Mac-mini-A1283-Terabyte-Drive/660/1

(The description of course assumes you're trying to put two drives in it permanently, but you can figure out what steps will actually be required to do what you want.)

So it will require the purchase of a somewhat specialized cable (iFixit used to sell them as part of a kit, but not currently) and a fair amount of work. If you think it's worth it to you to save a few bucks on a SATA-USB adapter, go for it, but frankly with how cheap SATA-USB2 cases or stand-alone doodads are these days, it's probably not worth it; bargain-basement examples:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817334012
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817334012

 

[donaldl43]

Nah, I was only gonna consider it if it didn't require anything special. I went ahead and bought a 500GB drive and a Firewire enclosure. I've cloned the drive in the enclosure so I suspect I can now swap the drives and keep the 120 in the enclosure as my backup?

Thanks for the reply btw!

Update: That worked just fine. I used Carbon Copy Cloner and swapped them after the update. I now have the 500 in the Mini.