Mac Mini 2012 + 4TB Toshiba Drive

[gumbaloom]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyones ever tried installing a 4TB Toshiba 2.5in drive in to a Mac Mini 2012 ?

I did this a few days ago and was a bit of a push but I now have a 4TB drive as my main drive. Had to remvoe the secondary drive as the Toshiba is oversized but it does work ?

If anyone is interested I can go in to more detail but there is a health warning as it's a bit on the dangerous side - not an easy install.


-gumbaloom

 

[MBAir2010]

i just picked a 2012 mac mini which wont boot, but the disk utility reads 1.18 GB capacity
the previous owner was nice to install 16GB of ram while keeping the chases excellent.
they just screwed up the partitioning the drive to 2GB
and probably sold or pawned that.
nothing seemed to work for erasing, time machining and formatting ,
and the 4TB toshiba seems tempting, but not tonite

these are beautiful computers tho!

 

[gumbaloom]

i just picked a 2012 mac mini which wont boot, but the disk utility reads 1.18 GB capacity
the previous owner was nice to install 16GB of ram while keeping the chases excellent.
they just screwed up the partitioning the drive to 2GB
and probably sold or pawned that.
nothing seemed to work for erasing, time machining and formatting ,
and the 4TB toshiba seems tempting, but not tonite

these are beautiful computers tho!

Have you tried using Internet Recovery Mode ? ( Option + R i think)

That will boot the system without needing the disk - I used internet recovery mode to initiate this new toshiba drive.

The problem with the 4TB toshiba drive is it's oversized so the SATA cable that comes with the mini won't work - you need a longer one. Also it doesn't it in to the screw holes - it's literally just sat in the hard drive caddy albet very tightly.

It cn be a squeeze to get it put back together - the SATA cable had a plastic rim aorund it so had to ever so slightly bend the logic board to get it in - hence the health warning - you also need to line up the logic board just right so it all fits back together.

The cowling is also a bit of a struggle to get back in to place but it works JUST as long as you are VERY VERY careful.

I take no responsibility for anyone who tries this and does dmanager to their machine in the process.

 

[MBAir2010]

tried everything, im trying to remember all the cmd ? to read a usb drive, and using a Microsoft keyboard
my 15th reboot asked to a bluetooth device, i have a anger BT keyboard, but dead AA batteries.
this is a good sign!
today was a win even if i cant get that to boot up.
just the body and 16GB RAM was worth the price.
the previous owner really screwed up the hard drive, partitioned that to 2GB!

oh i just got the USB to install Mountain Lion.....nope!

 

[gumbaloom]

tried everything, im trying to remember all the cmd ? to read a usb drive, and using a Microsoft keyboard
my 15th reboot asked to a bluetooth device, i have a anger BT keyboard, but dead AA batteries.
this is a good sign!
today was a win even if i cant get that to boot up.
just the body and 16GB RAM was worth the price.
the previous owner really screwed up the hard drive, partitioned that to 2GB!

oh i just got the USB to install Mountain Lion.....nope!

Use Internet recovery mode - option+ r - you need a wired keyboard and you have to hit option+r AFTER the chime and keep on hitting it till you see a spinning globe. (You need to have it jacked in to Ethernet so it can pull the necessary stuff from Apples servers so it takes longer )

How to Start Up a Mac in Internet Recovery Mode

If your Mac isn't connected to a storage drive with macOS installed, or your boot drive is corrupted, the computer will flash a question mark...

www.ifixit.com

EDIT - Command / Option / R

On a microsoft keyboard it would be the windows key + alt + r

After you've done that you'll get in to internet recovery mode and have acces to disk utility.

 

[MBAir2010]

Use Internet recovery mode - option+ r - you need a wired keyboard and you have to hit option+r AFTER the chime and keep on hitting it till you see a spinning globe. (You need to have it jacked in to Ethernet so it can pull the necessary stuff from Apples servers so it takes longer )

How to Start Up a Mac in Internet Recovery Mode

If your Mac isn't connected to a storage drive with macOS installed, or your boot drive is corrupted, the computer will flash a question mark...

www.ifixit.com

EDIT - Command / Option / R

On a microsoft keyboard it would be the windows key + alt + r

After you've done that you'll get in to internet recovery mode and have acces to disk utility.

did that at 4pm est
goes to disk utitly
there is embedded 2GB on this drive that was formatted and now im thinking it's un erasable.

im trying the windows alt r and got the globe, hope this works!

thanks for your input tho, i have reinstated too many macs and flabbergasted i cant solve this now.

 

[MBAir2010]

ohhhhh, black apple logo.......scrolling....
got Catalina
option to disk utlity
and nothing.
the drive is just over formatted...to 2.01 GB

 

[gumbaloom]

ohhhhh, black apple logo.......scrolling....
got Catalina
option to disk utlity
and nothing.
the drive is just over formatted...to 2.01 GB

Sounds like the drive might be dead.

If you’ve tried deleting the volumes andr formatting from disk utility on internet recovery mode the disk might be fubarred.

Id whip the drive out and stick it on a USB SATA cable on another machine and run a drive checking utility for bad sectors

I had a similar situation with the 3TB drive on a time capsule and it was acting weird - when I stuck a drive checker utility in it loads of bad sectors showed up so was time to throw the drive.

If it’s the original drive that shipped with the machine chances of a fubarred drive are high

 

[gumbaloom]

Sounds like the drive might be dead.

If you’ve tried deleting the volumes andr formatting from disk utility on internet recovery mode the disk might be fubarred.

Id whip the drive out and stick it on a USB SATA cable on another machine and run a drive checking utility for bad sectors

I had a similar situation with the 3TB drive on a time capsule and it was acting weird - when I stuck a drive checker utility in it loads of bad sectors showed up so was time to throw the drive.

If it’s the original drive that shipped with the machine chances of a fubarred drive are high

Just a quick sanity Check you’re sure the 2gb partition isn’t the recovery partition ?

You can’t make a new partition in the unallocated space?. What does that t say the whole disk space is?

If you’re getting numbers that don’t make sense I’d strongly recommend running a drive Utility on the drive to rule out bad sectors

 

[StoneJack]

make catalina usb installer, boot from usb, reformat drive.

 

[MBAir2010]

Sounds like the drive might be dead.

If you’ve tried deleting the volumes andr formatting from disk utility on internet recovery mode the disk might be fubarred.

the problem was the connector was not set properly on the logic board.
it needed an extra tap!

sleep is a good thing!
when the mini restarted, Nene needed a password
which i failed to get or enter
so
the drive a 1TB and im internet recovering this now.
probably will install Catalina just to see the specs,
then i can go back to Mojave or MT Lion via time machine.
im happy the graphic card and everything else seems to work.
just need to put a fresh OS on the mini

thanks for your concern and help!

 

[Freeangel1]

I just bought 2 2.6 Quad Core i7 Mac mini's as Servers. THESE THINGS ARE AWESOME!
TOTALLY FIXABLE!
11 watts of power consumption at idle. M1 Mac mini does a little better at 4 watts idle but not fixable.
I just wish you could install more than 16GB of RAM. 32GB would make me Happy!
13,000 Geek Bench score for the 2.6 with 16GB of memory.
It just has a lousy on board graphics chip But no worries when rack mounted as full time servers!

I need to get a 10GB ethernet adapter and I'm all set for high speed file transfer goodness!

LOVE INTEL!

PS. Info I found.
the Mac mini 2012 has Thunderbolt 1. You can connect Thunderbolt 3 devices with the Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter. The Builds list has examples of other people connecting Thunderbolt 3 eGPU boxes to the Mac mini 2012. If you're just connecting a network card, then you can get smaller Thunderbolt 3 PCIe expansion boxes (OWC or Sonnet or Netstor or whatever). I'm not sure what ethernet NICs macOS supports. If there's no built-in driver then you can go to the hackintosh community and find a driver there.

OWC and Sonnet have a 10 GbE Thunderbolt 3 device which is less expensive than an eGPU or their Thunderbolt 3 expansion box but they only have one port.

 

[MBAir2010]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyones ever tried installing a 4TB Toshiba 2.5in drive in to a Mac Mini 2012 ?

I did this a few days ago and was a bit of a push but I now have a 4TB drive as my main drive. Had to remvoe the secondary drive as the Toshiba is oversized but it does work ?

If anyone is interested I can go in to more detail but there is a health warning as it's a bit on the dangerous side - not an easy install.


-gumbaloom

woah!
did you use this as the mini's only drive, or 2 ssd?
i saw one on amazon for $100ish and some that were thicker than the usually sized one.
how is the fan noise and any other reports?

 

[MBAir2010]

I just bought 2 2.6 Quad Core i7 Mac mini's as Servers. THESE THINGS ARE AWESOME!
TOTALLY FIXABLE!
11 watts of power consumption at idle. M1 Mac mini does a little better at 4 watts idle but not fixable.
I just wish you could install more than 16GB of RAM. 32GB would make me Happy!

 was smart back then, anything more than 16gb was deemed "pro" in 2012

for my mini, probably install a WD 500 blue from them or walmart- same price.
i might give OWC a try as well, but they are $20 more, and have 3 series.

 

[gumbaloom]

woah!
did you use this as the mini's only drive, or 2 ssd?
i saw one on amazon for $100ish and some that were thicker than the usually sized one.
how is the fan noise and any other reports?

Fan noise is OK I think ?

The 4TB drive is my only drive - no other drive will fit because its oversized - I wanted one drive for the sake of my itunes library - already over 2TB of TV episodes and movies and will probably top 3TB - think multiple 100+ ep series here.

But like I said - not a task for the faint of heart as it's a real tight squeeze fitting back together.

 

[MBAir2010]

Fan noise is OK I think ?

The 4TB drive is my only drive - no other drive will fit because its oversized - I wanted one drive for the sake of my itunes library - already over 2TB of TV episodes and movies and will probably top 3TB - think multiple 100+ ep series here.

But like I said - not a task for the faint of heart as it's a real tight squeeze fitting back together.

those side wires are a nuisance, although the mini was designed very well to fit all those components.
what i do i install a TV series, like Game of thrones season4 from a hard drive onto my MacBook air.
just scrolling through the library on an TV3 is tedious, but still easier than DVDs, and live TV.