How to work with/configure 3 drives in mac mini. Can this be done?

[Wd999]

Advice kindly sought,

I have a Mac mini and have purchased an SSD. I plan to make this the boot drive and install High Sierra on it.

The mini currently has 2 drives, a 500GB boot drive with High Sierra and a 1TB secondary HDD for storage.

My question is, how do I go about doing this, logistically that is? Only the 500GB HDD is currently bootable, so if I install the SSD, in place of the 1TB, I'd be left with out the extra space, ie 500GB instead of 1TB. I'm guessing I'll need to:

1. Clone with CCC current 500GB to 1TB disc, thus making it bootable.
2. Remove 500GB disc and install SSD.
3. Clone 1TB to new SSD (create partition and clone 1TB HDD
4. Format 1TB

Please let me know if this is a sound plan and what settings I should use for the partition, file format etc.

Thanks in advance,

Im333

 

[hallux]

Do you have a 2012 or 2014 Mini? The 2012 will accept two SATA drives while the 2014 only has one SATA connection and one M-SATA (through an adapter and maybe a cable). I assume the 1TB flash drive would be on that second connection in the 2014 since a platter drive won't work there, and depending on the drive you bought that might not work either.

 

[Wd999]

Sorry, should have mentioned. It's a mid 2011 mini so should accept 2 drives. I assume (without opening it yet) it already has 2 drives installed as I can see two on the system information. The last user also maxed the ram to 16gb.

 

[Fishrrman]

I don't think you're going to squeeze a third drive into a Mini.
Even if it would fit (physically), there's no way to connect it to the motherboard.

Hook it up via USB.
Yes, it's only USB2 on a 2011 Mini, but... still not that bad.

Or... you could use the thunderbolt port, but that's going to be considerably more $$$$.

 

[Wd999]

I don't think you're going to squeeze a third drive into a Mini.
Even if it would fit (physically), there's no way to connect it to the motherboard.

Hook it up via USB.
Yes, it's only USB2 on a 2011 Mini, but... still not that bad.

Or... you could use the thunderbolt port, but that's going to be considerably more $$$$.

Sorry, perhaps I should have made the post clearer. I'm not wanting to end up using all 3 drives concurrently. I just want to use the ssd as the main boot drive and the 1tb as secondary storage. The 500GB will be redundant. It's more the logistics of the setup I'm interested in.