OWC Data Doubler or External FW800 HDD

[dc52nv]

I have a 2010 Mac Mini currently with a Samsung EVO 250GB SSD. I was thinking of getting a DD and install a HGST 7200RPM 1TB HDD to put my home folder in and just have my SSD for OS X and apps. If I go with the DD can I simply leave my SSD where it's at and install my HDD to the DD? Or would I have to install the SSD to the DD? Can I simply move my home folder to the HDD after installation from my SSD or does it require more than that?

I was also thinking of placing my HDD to an OWC FW800 enclosure and moving my home folder to it and daisy chaining that enclosure to another FW800 enclosure for TM backup. Will this setup also work? Anyone know what kind of speed difference I'm looking at between the 2 setups as in transferring files or saving to my HDD?

Thanks in advance.

 

[dyt1983]

edit: To remove personally identifying info not relevant to the conversation.

 

[dc52nv]

I have a 2010 Mac Mini that just lives in a regular (large) room in the house doesn't like having 2x 7200RPM Hitachi drives (it's original configuration), or even a SSD + 1x 7200RPM Hitachi drive. The temperature swings seem to kill the drive. My GF likes the heat set at 75˚F in the winter and I'm sure that doesn't help.

After killing 3x of these drives, leaving the SSD internal and moving one external has increased its longevity.

If you do have both drives internal, you can move your home directory to the spinner and either soft link to it or mount the spinner on /Users. I don't like to do that with externals as that drive might not be present, so you could leave your home directory on the SSD and mount the spinner on your Documents folder or soft link your documents folder to the external. Or just store your documents on the external and navigate there all the time.

If you daisy chain a backup drive, remember that during backups your bandwidth will be shared with your storage drive, so it will be slower. That's the downside.

I get acceptable performance from an external FW drive. I originally ran a SATA cable outside my Mini and it was faster, but for a bunch of reasons the FW was more suitable.

Thanks for your feedback. I havent thought about the heat issue having 2 drives in my mini. It makes sense since I'm sure even SSD's get warm over time. I think I will try moving my pictures over to my external FW drive to test it out and see if I like it. If all goes smooth I can always move more stuff to it or just move everything back to my SSD if I don't like it.

Thanks for the daisy chain feedback as well. Would it matter the order I chain them together? I was planning on having my TM drive as the last drive on the chain.

 

[dyt1983]

edit: To remove personally identifying info not relevant to the conversation.

 

[dc52nv]

Yeah, on my newer Minis I'm using Intel 730 SSDs and they idle pretty warm, so I didn't even try a second internal.

For FW, it SHOULDN'T make a difference how you daisychain them, but it really depends on the chipset in the enclosure you use. But if it does, the order will you suggested would probably be fine.

I'm using two OWC Mercury On-The-Go enclosures.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MSTG800U3K/