I just thought that I'd post here that there will be three mac mini matching stackable models coming out in the Summer of this year. I contacted the manufacturer a few months ago:
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LaCie or Ministack?
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Yep, you're right.
You can transfer files to and from your mini regardless of how the external drive / volume is formatted, but it makes sense to have the internal HD of whatever mini you have (PPC or Intel) cloned to the external to serve as a backup, and so that you can boot from it to run repair and diagnostic apps should you need to.
The only possible problem I see is if you have stored files on your external drive and you then switch to an Intel mini and want the external to be able to boot the mini. In this case you may have to repartition / erase the external so it using the correct parition format to allow it to boot the Intel mini.
Obviously, should you have any files that live only on the external HD then you are going to have to back them up somewhere else before you reformat and copy them back.
Do you have a DVD burner?
You can transfer files to and from your mini regardless of how the external drive / volume is formatted, but it makes sense to have the internal HD of whatever mini you have (PPC or Intel) cloned to the external to serve as a backup, and so that you can boot from it to run repair and diagnostic apps should you need to.
The only possible problem I see is if you have stored files on your external drive and you then switch to an Intel mini and want the external to be able to boot the mini. In this case you may have to repartition / erase the external so it using the correct parition format to allow it to boot the Intel mini.
Obviously, should you have any files that live only on the external HD then you are going to have to back them up somewhere else before you reformat and copy them back.
Do you have a DVD burner?
No.deebster said:
All you need is a hard drive that has system files the Mac can use to boot OS X from. You just need to figure out some way to boot from the drive, and if it's possible, I think all you need to do is hold down Option. Will show you all options for booting. (Well, that's what it is for PPC macs, and Intel Macs have that option too but I don't know if USB2.0/Firewire devices are included)
Simply put, you need to install OS X on there, or make a clone of the internal drive (not always guaranteed to work, especially if you don't clone it right) to be able to boot from it.
Then again, I haven't had the pleasure of figuring out a way to boot the Intel Macs like that, if there even is one, so take it with a grain of salt.
But considering how both PPC and Intel Macs use HFS+ Journaled as the default filesystem, I don't see what you're trying to say.