Mac mini (late 2012) 1.12TB Fusion ---> 1x 250GB SSD

[Jim Lahey]

Hello folks. My Mac mini (late 2012) has the Fusion setup, which I understand to be two separate 2.5" drives (1xSSD + 1xHDD).

I do not need much capacity these days, as this machine is now basically a Plex Server with all big data being network attached, and iCloud Drive is used for any personal documents. I do, however, wish to improve its general performance, as I'm fairly sure the Fusion setup is slowly failing. With this in mind I am wanting to swap out both existing drives for a single, newer SSD and then recover macOS from a NAS Time Machine backup. I'm aware that I will need to ensure TRIM is enabled on the new drive, but are there any other points of interest or potential hiccups? Does the EFI come into play here and will it spit its dummy out when the Fusion setup is removed? I don't wish to reuse the old drives anywhere.

Thanks for reading. I hope someone can assure me that it will be easy enough. If it matters, my proposed drive is a Crucial CT250MX500SSD1 MX500 250GB.

 

[Kaida]

Pretty straightforward, if you don't want to remove the upper drive, you can just unplug the sata cable and leave it out. The lower drive can be swapped without removing the motherboard.

 

[Jim Lahey]

Pretty straightforward, if you don't want to remove the upper drive, you can just unplug the sata cable and leave it out. The lower drive can be swapped without removing the motherboard.

Good to hear. Thanks a lot for the reassurance. By lower drive, I assume you mean the upper drive as I will see it with the machine upside down? Excuse my ignorance but I've only ever opened it up the once to fit 16GB RAM.

 

[Boyd01]

I do not need much capacity these days, as this machine is now basically a Plex Server with all big data being network attached

I have a 2014 Mini with the fusion drive that I use as a media server. Instead of installing a new SSD, I simply split the 128gb SSD from the 1tb hard drive, which can be done with a terminal command. If you really don't need much disk space, this is about as easy as it gets.

Now, I am assuming that the 2012 fusion drive is the same as 2014, however I've read that some fusion drives only have tiny (32gb?) SSD's so you'd need to check that out first. Anyway, just an alternative you could consider.

 

[Jim Lahey]

I have a 2014 Mini with the fusion drive that I use as a media server. Instead of installing a new SSD, I simply split the 128gb SSD from the 1tb hard drive, which can be done with a terminal command. If you really don't need much disk space, this is about as easy as it gets.

Now, I am assuming that the 2012 fusion drive is the same as 2014, however I've read that some fusion drives only have tiny (32gb?) SSD's so you'd need to check that out first. Anyway, just an alternative you could consider.

Thanks. I have considered this but decided I'd prefer a clean break with a more capable, modern SSD. Existing SSD is 128GB. Good idea but not for me.

 

[Boyd01]

Cool. But just realize, you will always have the bottleneck of the interface speed on the 2012 Mini. I have a 2012 quad-core Mini Server with an original Apple 256gb SSD and this is the performance I get. I don't think you will get much better, regardless of how "capable" your new disk is.

 

[Jim Lahey]

Yes you make a good point, and I have just realised I actually have a rather old 480GB Crucial M500 that I pulled from a PC not long ago. Clearly it won't be a match for a newer MX500 but probably faster than my current setup, and effectively free. Time to have a think.