Upgrade 2014 Mini to SSD?

[urbanmacUser]

I bought a 2014 Mini when they came out and have to say its good but I wish I'd of put a SSD in instead of the standard 5400rpm disk

Is it now possible to upgrade it to a SSD? Apart from the SSD what else do I need?

 

[Gav2k]

Yes. Guides on ifixit.

 

[urbanmacUser]

Got it. Thanks.

1TB SSD is quite expensive wondering if a hybrid would be better.

 

[yjchua95]

Got it. Thanks.

1TB SSD is quite expensive wondering if a hybrid would be better.

Hybrids are junk and don't work any better.

 

[Celerondon]

Hybrids are junk and don't work any better.

Right, hybrids cost more and deliver a small performance increase at best. Fusion Drive (FD) is another matter entirely. FD delivers most of the SSD speed boost and all of the HDD storage size advantage for a much lower price than an SSD of comparable size. The SSD is rock simple, reliable, and just plain fast.

With an inexpensive external case, you can safely convert your Mac to boot from an SSD without cracking the case or risking anything. The Fisherrman describes how in this post:
[URL="https://forums.macrumors.com/...post-17284910"]External SSD as primary drive?[/URL]

 

[steve217]

With an inexpensive external case, you can safely convert your Mac to boot from an SSD without cracking the case or risking anything. The Fisherrman describes how in this post:
External SSD as primary drive?

... And you can always fuse the internal and external later if you want the convenience of single volume storage.

See here for how-to.

 

[Partron22]

Fusion drive is an interim technology. Four years from now people will point at you and laugh when you say you have one.
I'll be booting off a 500gB external SSD (USB3, not Thunderbolt) until prices come down in a couple years.
Maybe then I'll put a cheap 4tB SSD inside my Mac.

That slow internal 1tB will make a good backup boot disk, with room left over for Time Machine, Music library, and infrequently used docs partitions.

 

[Celerondon]

Fusion drive is an interim technology. Four years from now people will point at you and laugh when you say you have one.
I'll be booting off a 500gB external SSD (USB3, not Thunderbolt) until prices come down in a couple years.
Maybe then I'll put a cheap 4tB SSD inside my Mac.

That slow internal 1tB will make a good backup boot disk, with room left over for Time Machine, Music library, and infrequently used docs partitions.

Well Patron22, I like your solution to the storage speed versus $ challenge. In fact I recommended it in this very thread! I imagine that your strategy works well for you and you have described a plan for the future. Is that because your 500Gb USB3 external SSD is not the ultimate good-until-the-end-of-time storage solution?


Look Patron22, they are all interim technologies! They were all high-tech triumphs as well. In this fast moving field, saying that something useful and valuable is worth less because it will be old in a few years is...

I predict that folks will continue laughing at the goofy things that we post on Macrumors Forums. Thank you for helping me select an avatar.

 

[Partron22]

"Look Patron22, they are all interim technologies!"

Sure, sooner or later all the protons in the universe will decay, and we'll be left with a dilute soup of radiation.
However, when I first heard of "fusion drives", my very first thought was "colossal claptrap and kludgery".

 

[Celerondon]

...Four years from now people will point at you and laugh when you say you have one...

"...
However, when I first heard of "fusion drives", my very first thought was "colossal claptrap and kludgery".

Unlike you, I won't try to predict how long Apple's Fusion Drive will be a technical leader but it is certainly competitive today.

Should a person tout a "very first thought" as wisdom for others to follow? Most of us start out knowing little or nothing about that next thing. Do you find that you intuitively know all that you need to know from the start when confronted with new technology?

What did you think when you first saw this matrix? Did your first understanding of that mass of wire and rings cover the significance of the primitive (advanced?) new technology?

 

[Partron22]

What did you think when you first saw this matrix?

I thought it was very pretty.
Surprised me back in the early 80's at how slow core was when compared to the solid state memory found in my Aim 65. The rocker switch boot routines on those old core behemoths were a hoot to enter, but it was clear that monitor in ROM, even something like BASIC was the wave of the future. That didn't take many years, and I doubt we'll be seeing many fusion drives even a few years from now. Sure, some people still run hand sewn memory, but it's no longer a mainstream device, it's more like a hobby restoring old Tektronix oscilloscopes:

Nice for their time, but their time is past.
As SSDs gets cheaper and more reliable, not only will the hybrids disappear, but HDD's themselves may become rare objects in a decade or less.

 

[steve217]

Thank you for helping me select an avatar.

Dag nab it. You beat me to it!

 

[applelover4u]

I just hooked up an external SSD via USB. It is 250gb. I bought from it and put all my apps on it along with a few other things.. Difference is night and day!

 

[Celerondon]

Dag nab it. You beat me to it!

That 'scope is beautiful! Do you restore them? During a visit the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA this spring I had a chance to reflect on the marvelous chain of technology that got us to this point.

Certainly none of this stuff can stay current forever. I admit that hybrids and HDDs will eventually meet the same fate as 5¼" floppy disks and MFM hard drives. But we should also be able to agree that our present cutting-edge SSD technology will similarly follow FD to the dustbin of history as well. If you think about it, the PCIe SSDs have already pushed their slower cousins to the edge of the abyss. I just don't see the point of dumping (on) technology because it will eventually be obsolete. In this field, it all gets old in years or even months.

Sorry about that Avatar.

I could have used an Intel 300A and an Abit BH6 because they were some of my favorites but ...
Despite their glorious performance that pair are ancient technology and after all, this is an Apple board.

 

[Celerondon]

I just hooked up an external SSD via USB. It is 250gb. I bought from it and put all my apps on it along with a few other things.. Difference is night and day!

Oh no, not another one!

Applelover4u have you been restarting your computer just for fun? Have you noticed that since your update now brains taste good?

Night and day? I think you have the bug too buddy.

 

[yjchua95]

I just hooked up an external SSD via USB. It is 250gb. I bought from it and put all my apps on it along with a few other things.. Difference is night and day!

Says the person who claims that his 1.4/4/500GB HDD Mac Mini was fast enough...

 

[xsquid]

Says the person who claims that his 1.4/4/500GB HDD Mac Mini was fast enough...

I was going to post the very same thing. I installed a 256 samsung evo 850 in my 2012 base and it's absolutely night and day difference. It beats me how anyone can argue that a spinner in a mac with yosemite is fast enough, guess they have to try an ssd to really see the huge difference.

 

[yjchua95]

Delete

 

[guruuno]

So, what about Trim? What about Samsung saying that without Trim support in Yosemite, the drives will fry in 3-6 months? Why go back to Mavericks, just for trim? I'm much confused, that 3rd party manufacturers sell SSD's yet the OEM Apple SSD's are proprietary are the only supported ones for Trim. Conversations, opinions are many in multiple discussion areas on groups here and there, yet there is no solid confirmation as to how to achieve the necessary performance from an SSD on Yosemite with Trim enabled, without disabling the kext security measures instituted by Apple.
So, I have a 2012 MacMini i7, 16Gb that will go on eBay....I'm upset.

 

[Fishrrman]

guruuno writes above:
"So, what about Trim? What about Samsung saying that without Trim support in Yosemite, the drives will fry in 3-6 months? Why go back to Mavericks, just for trim? I'm much confused"

Don't be confused.

If you're worried about Samsung, get a Crucial drive instead.
I've been using a Crucial m500 drive as an "external booter" for over a year now, running in a USB3/SATA docking station.
Of course, TRIM has never been enabled (can't be done via USB3).
The drive runs as fast now, as it did when I first installed it.
No problems, none whatsoever.

Your drive will not "fry" if you don't use TRIM.
I doubt you'll notice any "slowdowns" at all.

 

[mmomega]

Picked up a new 2014 Mini 2 weeks ago and a cheap 120GB $50 SSD from BestBuy to replace an aging old Windows machine at work.
I already have the torx bits to remove the cover so the job took maybe 15 minutes for the swap and then however long to reinstall OS X and Bootcamp WIN7.

Connected to an LG 29" UltraWide 21:9 monitor and now my people working on 27" or dual monitors are jealous.
New hardware does that

 

[steve217]

Picked up a new 2014 Mini 2 weeks ago ....

mmomega: Which 2014 did you get?

 

[MetalGamer09]

Just bought 1.4/4GB/500GB and want to do this upgrade. Wanna choose the best SSD for this. I'm thinking a thunderbolt drive will be much better than USB 3 right? We carry thunderbolt drives where I work and I get them at cost so price shouldn't be too bad

 

[yjchua95]

Just bought 1.4/4GB/500GB and want to do this upgrade. Wanna choose the best SSD for this. I'm thinking a thunderbolt drive will be much better than USB 3 right? We carry thunderbolt drives where I work and I get them at cost so price shouldn't be too bad

In that case I'd recommend one of those LaCie Rugged enclosures and stick a Samsung 850 Evo into it.

 

[applelover4u]

Picked up a new 2014 Mini 2 weeks ago and a cheap 120GB $50 SSD from BestBuy to replace an aging old Windows machine at work.
I already have the torx bits to remove the cover so the job took maybe 15 minutes for the swap and then however long to reinstall OS X and Bootcamp WIN7.

Connected to an LG 29" UltraWide 21:9 monitor and now my people working on 27" or dual monitors are jealous.
New hardware does that

WOW was it easy to the replace the internal job? Some say it take hours not 15 min