I have a early 2009 Mini that I installed 8GB of ram a while back. I am looking at upgrading the spinning hard drive with a SSD. For those of you that have upgraded your early 2009 Mini's what SSD did you install, what issues did you have & any tips or tricks you know of? I have replaced a few spinning hard drives so the actual removal & installation is good to go. Thanks for any info you have.
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Early 2009 Mini SSD Upgrade Question
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I'm thinking about doing something similar and would welcome suggestions too.
I currently run Snow Leopard on my Early 2009 Mac Mini, and want to ultimately upgrade to 8GB of RAM (I have 4GB right now) and do a clean install of El Capitan on a new SSD that will go inside my Mini. I have an idea of something to try, but I'm not sure if I can do it - what I want to do is buy an external enclosure for the new SSD, do the clean install of El Capitan on it, running it externally (to test out the OS), and then just put that same SSD into my Mini once I am okay with El Capitan's compatibility. Is that possible?
I currently run Snow Leopard on my Early 2009 Mac Mini, and want to ultimately upgrade to 8GB of RAM (I have 4GB right now) and do a clean install of El Capitan on a new SSD that will go inside my Mini. I have an idea of something to try, but I'm not sure if I can do it - what I want to do is buy an external enclosure for the new SSD, do the clean install of El Capitan on it, running it externally (to test out the OS), and then just put that same SSD into my Mini once I am okay with El Capitan's compatibility. Is that possible?
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I replaced the HDD in my 2009 mini back when it was new (in 2009).
There wasn't many choices then and also not a lot suggestions as not many were going this route yet.
So at the time I picked an Intel 80Gb SSD and it installed without a hitch, it is still working just fine after all these years and this is without the benefit of Trim.
There wasn't many choices then and also not a lot suggestions as not many were going this route yet.
So at the time I picked an Intel 80Gb SSD and it installed without a hitch, it is still working just fine after all these years and this is without the benefit of Trim.
The hard drive just died after a period of inactivity some two months ago. I picked up a 128 GB SDD, a crucial model, the cheapest SSD I could find. I mean the mini doesn't have SATA 6Gb, and thus investing in something much more expensive didn't seem like a good idea. If it is anything like my MacBook 2006, it will still be going strong for a couple more years. The MB was shelved just because it was too slow, and not because it doesn't work. I ask myself how long can I hold to my MBPro, will it be so reliable ?
Thank you for linking me to that thread I must have looked past it when I searched yesterday.
Has anyone installed a Patriot Blast SSD in a 2009 mini? A local shop has them on sale.
I have used Kingston ssdnow drives in two minis.
In both I have removed the optical drives and installed caddies for a second drive.
I reused one caddy from a white MacBook (some screw holes did not line up but this thing is stationary so no worries). The other mini got a specific to mini caddy and all fits perfect.
Install in external enclosure first sounds like a good idea.
Go for it.
In both I have removed the optical drives and installed caddies for a second drive.
I reused one caddy from a white MacBook (some screw holes did not line up but this thing is stationary so no worries). The other mini got a specific to mini caddy and all fits perfect.
Install in external enclosure first sounds like a good idea.
Go for it.