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Will this work?

I don't know about Mojave, but that works on my 2011 MBP on Sierra.
 
After watching their videos, my understanding was that the "blade" style OWC Aura SSD's are the easiest to install in the 2014 Mini, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has done this. Was considering one of these for my own base 2014 Mini awhile ago, but decided it just wasn't worth spending any money on a computer that slow with only 4gb RAM. ;)

Does your 2014 Mini have a fusion drive? If so, it's simple to separate the SSD from the 1TB hard drive without buying anything or opening up the computer. That's what I did with my 2.8ghz 2014 Mini, and I'm using the 128gb SSD as a boot drive with Mojave which works very well.
 
Yes, the SATA SSD, with the USB dock, will boot your mini fine.
It's a worthwhile task to install the SSD internally, and when taking your time, is not that difficult.
 
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If you're concerned about opening the Mini, you could use an external SSD. I boot my 2012 quad Mini from a USB 3.0 Samsung T3 SSD and it works very well. An internal SSD will be faster, but as a practical matter you may not notice much difference. I use mine extensively for video editing in Final Cut Pro with no problems.

But the Aura SSD in this video looks like it's easily installed and could be removed easily if you need to take the mini in for service. https://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/mac-mini-2014-pcie_ssd/Macmini7-1/

My impression is that SATA SSD installation is more involved, but I could be wrong. :)
 
If the dock is USB3, you can boot and run the Mini just fine using an SSD in the dock.
I booted and ran my 2012 Mini over SIX YEARS that way. It still runs fine "on my back table".

You will see read speeds of about 420-430mbps and writes in the 300-375 range (depends on the SSD).
 
FWIW, here is the original Apple internal 128gb SSD on my 2014 2.8ghz Mini

mini2014-128ssd.png



and this is the external 1TB USB 3.0 Samsung T3 SSD on my 2012 2.6ghz quad Mini


samsung1tb.jpg



Which 2014 Mini do you have? How much RAM? If you only have 4gb, you may benefit from a fast internal SSD since it would speed up virtual memory swapping. With an 8gb Mini, you might not really notice much difference with an external SSD. The main difference I see is that the internal SSD boots faster (something like 15 seconds vs 30 seconds), but that's not a big deal for me.
 
If you installed the OS, which best means that you booted to a bootable USB installer, chose your external SSD as the destination for the install, then set up a new user (or migrated your apps and files from another partition, such as your old internal drive), then it should already boot to that external (because it does that successfully during the install).
If you finished the install, then tried shutting down, and rebooting, and it did not boot to the external this time, boot to whatever system, then open System Preferences, and make sure that your external boot drive is selected in the Startup Disk pref pane.
If that still does not work - boot again to your installer, erase the external from Disk Utility, and try the install again.

Which brand and model of SSD did you finally buy?
 
Which brand and model of SSD did you buy?

I would suggest erasing that SSD, and specifically do NOT format the drive APFS, make sure it begins as the standard Mac OS Extended, with a GUID partition map. If you don't see that choice in Disk Utility, make sure to click the View icon, and change that to "Show All Devices". Select the device line (with the model information about your drive). Erase THAT. Again, choose GUID partition map, and Mac OS Extended (journaled). Name the partition whatever you like, and click Erase.
Why make it that way, you may ask? The Mojave installer will check the format, and change it automatically to APFS during the install. In my experience, it may install more smoothly, if you let the installer make that format change.
 
Ah, OK. I just assumed that you were showing a sample of one that you were asking about, as that Neptune shows as no longer sold by OWC. Folks here would recommend that you check at OWC support for firmware updates for your SSD. But a discontinued model might not be supported when it's no longer a current model.

The rest of my post is good to try. Hope it helps you.
 
DeltaMac said:
Which brand and model of SSD did you buy?

I would suggest erasing that SSD, and specifically do NOT format the drive APFS, make sure it begins as the standard Mac OS Extended, with a GUID partition map. If you don't see that choice in Disk Utility, make sure to click the View icon, and change that to "Show All Devices". Select the device line (with the model information about your drive). Erase THAT. Again, choose GUID partition map, and Mac OS Extended (journaled). Name the partition whatever you like, and click Erase.
Why make it that way, you may ask? The Mojave installer will check the format, and change it automatically to APFS during the install. In my experience, it may install more smoothly, if you let the installer make that format change.
Click to expand...
Did that. No go. So a call Will be needed.
 
Which part of those steps was a "no go"? Couldn't you erase that drive, selecting Mac OS Extended (journaled)? If THAT doesn't work (and Mac OS Extended (journaled) doesn't appear on the list of choices, then you don't have the line with the SSD manufacturer's info selected. (?)
 
OP:

Some basic questions. Please answer them.

What size is the drive INSIDE your Mac?
What size drive did you buy?

Both questions are important, as the answers determine what advice I should give you next.
 
OP in post #1 linked to a 250GB SSD from OWC.
A 2014 mini, with original HDD, would usually be 500 GB, or maybe 1 TB.
OP can post with correct size, but either one is larger than external.
 
wellander1 said:
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer Technology/U3S3HD/ and https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/S3D7N250S/
I am trying to speed up my Mac with ssd's and I want to boot off the ssd and have most files for I can run Mojave faster due to the APFS filesystem.
Can I boot off the ssd using this solution.
Or did I just buy the wrong items?
I am running Mac mini 2014.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

The answer is yes. My Macbook Air is setup this way. You can boot off an external USB 3 dock with a SSD even with a different OS. The most easiest way to do this fast migration would be to use Carbon Copy Cloner and clone some of your files on your HD's Mini 2014 including the OS (whatever it is -- I'm assuming it's on High Sierra?!?) onto the new SSD on the dock since you have a mismatched drive capacity (your internal is larger than your SSD). After that, allow Carbon Copy Cloner to write a boot recovery partition onto the new SSD drive.

When you want to reboot into this new SSD, you have 2 options. You can either manually select the new SSD drive as your boot drive by going into Preference and select "Start Up Disk". Choose your cloned SSD drive and then reboot. From there, you can install Mojave over High Sierra. The end result would be, you would have Mojave on the SSD as boot and High Sierra in your Mini's HD if that's the OS you have now. You can switch back and forth. If you already have Mojave on your Mini's HD, then your life just got so much easier cloning onto the SSD.

The second way to boot off the SSD temporarily is to press the "Option" before the chime which will take you into the boot manager. In the boot manager, you should see all your boot partitions including your recovery partitions. Select the Mojave partition on your SSD and it will boot from there. If you shutdown and restart again the next time, you will boot off your internal drive.

The evaluation copy of Carbon Copy Cloner is free for 30 days in which all functions are working. It should give you plenty of time to clone and setup Mojave. I use Carbon Copy Cloner on all my macs with backup boot drives and SSD drives of different OS systems to run specific applications that work only on a particular Mac OS.

Hope this helps.
 
Last edited:
DeltaMac said:
Which part of those steps was a "no go"? Couldn't you erase that drive, selecting Mac OS Extended (journaled)? If THAT doesn't work (and Mac OS Extended (journaled) doesn't appear on the list of choices, then you don't have the line with the SSD manufacturer's info selected. (?)
Click to expand...
The install part. It formats with out any problems. And I can put files on it.
[doublepost=1565715371][/doublepost]
DeltaMac said:
OP in post #1 linked to a 250GB SSD from OWC.
A 2014 mini, with original HDD, would usually be 500 GB, or maybe 1 TB.
OP can post with correct size, but either one is larger than external.
Click to expand...
1TB
[doublepost=1565715596][/doublepost]
iluvmacs99 said:
The answer is yes. My Macbook Air is setup this way. You can boot off an external USB 3 dock with a SSD even with a different OS. The most easiest way to do this fast migration would be to use Carbon Copy Cloner and clone some of your files on your HD's Mini 2014 including the OS (whatever it is -- I'm assuming it's on High Sierra?!?) onto the new SSD on the dock since you have a mismatched drive capacity (your internal is larger than your SSD). After that, allow Carbon Copy Cloner to write a boot recovery partition onto the new SSD drive.

When you want to reboot into this new SSD, you have 2 options. You can either manually select the new SSD drive as your boot drive by going into Preference and select "Start Up Disk". Choose your cloned SSD drive and then reboot. From there, you can install Mojave over High Sierra. The end result would be, you would have Mojave on the SSD as boot and High Sierra in your Mini's HD if that's the OS you have now. You can switch back and forth. If you already have Mojave on your Mini's HD, then your life just got so much easier cloning onto the SSD.

The second way to boot off the SSD temporarily is to press the "Option" before the chime which will take you into the boot manager. In the boot manager, you should see all your boot partitions including your recovery partitions. Select the Mojave partition on your SSD and it will boot from there. If you shutdown and restart again the next time, you will boot off your internal drive.

The evaluation copy of Carbon Copy Cloner is free for 30 days in which all functions are working. It should give you plenty of time to clone and setup Mojave. I use Carbon Copy Cloner on all my macs with backup boot drives and SSD drives of different OS systems to run specific applications that work only on a particular Mac OS.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
If possible I want to do a fresh install and setup from scratch.
 
wellander1 said:
The install part. It formats with out any problems. And I can put files on it.
...
If possible I want to do a fresh install and setup from scratch.
Click to expand...

When does it fail for the install?
At the beginning (and won't start the install), somewhere in the middle (maybe stops the install for a long period of time (30 minutes or longer? Give it an hour before you give up on it), or it just won't restart to that fresh install.
Do you get any kind of error message (I don't mean a log entry, I do mean a popup error of some kind)
Or, does it boot to the new system on your external drive, but only that one time (fails the next time you restart)
 
DeltaMac said:
When does it fail for the install?
At the beginning (and won't start the install), somewhere in the middle (maybe stops the install for a long period of time (30 minutes or longer? Give it an hour before you give up on it), or it just won't restart to that fresh install.
Do you get any kind of error message (I don't mean a log entry, I do mean a popup error of some kind)
Or, does it boot to the new system on your external drive, but only that one time (fails the next time you restart)
Click to expand...
No errors. It fails when it does the restart to start the install. And there is no option to boot to it.
 
The macOS install process begins by copying files to the destination drive, then boots to that "new" drive to do the actual install. Something to try: If it boots to the internal drive, shut off again, then boot with the Option key. Do you see your external drive THEN as a choice? I have never had to do that, so I am not sure how it would appear. The boot choice might show up as something generic, like "macOS boot system" or something else equally unusual. Try choosing THAT, then press enter, just to see what happens.
 
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