Mac mini 2010 SSD upgrade - SATA III & Trim

[dglenn9000]

I plan to upgrade my old 2010 Mac mini with an ssd drive. I am running maverick, soon to be el capitan. Before I open this puppy up, I want to confirm that an ssd 2.5" SATA III drive works with this older Mac. I have read other threads but all seem to differ slightly. It sounds like I "should" be able to install the drive with no problem and the only issue is TRIM will be disabled it that it is ok and I shouldn't notice any real lag.

Can anyone confirm. I plan to buy the Samsung 850 EVO 500gb from bestbuy today. I don't want to buy something incompatible.

 

[wlossw]

sata III drives will work when connected to a sata II port. The drive will be limited to sata II speeds. Also the latest versions of OSX will allow you to enable trim on non OEM drives if you so choose.

 

[Jozone]

Be very careful about certain Sandforce controllers and this machine. I attempted to install an Intel 530 series drive at one point in my 2010 and it was a disaster. Ended up switching to a Crucial MX100 and have been happy with it.

 

[treekram]

Be very careful about certain Sandforce controllers and this machine. I attempted to install an Intel 530 series drive at one point in my 2010 and it was a disaster. Ended up switching to a Crucial MX100 and have been happy with it.

There are problems with some SSD's and the Nvidia MCP79 SATA chipset that are in many of the Macs of that time period. But the Samsung 850 doesn't have that problem (it doesn't have the Sandforce controller).

 

[Jozone]

Nvidia MCP79 SATA chipset

Good call on this.. and for anyone referencing this thread in the future, don't mix SandForce SF-2200 Controller based SSDs and Nvidia MCP79 SATA.

 

[dglenn9000]

Great! Sounds like I am good to go. Thanks for the replies.

 

[antz359]

I plan to upgrade my old 2010 Mac mini with an ssd drive. I am running maverick, soon to be el capitan. Before I open this puppy up, I want to confirm that an ssd 2.5" SATA III drive works with this older Mac. I have read other threads but all seem to differ slightly. It sounds like I "should" be able to install the drive with no problem and the only issue is TRIM will be disabled it that it is ok and I shouldn't notice any real lag.

Can anyone confirm. I plan to buy the Samsung 850 EVO 500gb from bestbuy today. I don't want to buy something incompatible.

I have the same, I've the Samsung 840 Pro runs at SATAII speeds, plus I just put in 16Gb RAM from Newegg. As form TRIM I did the terminal hack that you can do.