Anyone added an SSD?

Please review this thread - iFixIt and others have noted an issue with the SATA cables for the second HD/SSD in the newest Mac Mini's

Dual HD/SSD config issue

I did a setup similar to Gert"s on a 6.2 (I7 Quad), same SSD 512GB M4, but I added Crucial's 16GB ram. It absolutely flies.

For Francesco De Giorgio, you need to boot off the Mountain Loin that shipped, don't ask me why, but normal OS X downloads aren't working for these upgrades (you see it all over the inter web right now), something is unique, the what shipped, which leaves cloning the original drive as the best option at the moment.

I removed the original 1TB hard drive from a new mid-range 2012 Mac Mini and added two 256GB Samsung 830 drives. Following an installation procedure similar to iFixit's for adding a second drive I had only one issue - very slow boot. After resetting the PRAM the new configuration worked fine. The PRAM reset was essential on my 2012 Mac Mini.

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone OS X Mountain Lion to the boot SSD drive.

I just added an Apple 512GB SSD out of a 2012 15" rMBP.

I got the drive and the converter from ebay.

Use this to convert to SATA3

Before installing I used a USB3 Thumbdrive with Lion installed to boot. I then used drive utility to restore the OS to the new SSD. The SSD was mounted on a SATA to Thunderbolt adapter. Everything should now be copied to the SSD.

Once installed I booted from the SSD. When everything looked good I cleared off the org 1TB disk for additionally storage.

All of my machines have SSD's now and well can't go past the Samsung 830 or Crucial M4 IMHO.

Mind you thy need a bit of prepping first and I don't know about the appliances you are using but if it has a defrag component you should turn it off as the read write ability will decrease it's life. In a Windows based app then the 7 Windows will use TRIM to get rid of the rubbish and get it in optimal mode.

hello guys and sorry for the lame question: i was an happy mac mini 2011 user, now i turned into the new mac mini late 2012 but it turned into &%*#!

first i wasn't able to add a second drive (seems like apple doesn't let you use the ifixit cable for the main drive and suddenly it worked only chaning the main sata cable: i used the apple one with my new samsung 830 ssd e the ifixit one with the original hard drive hitatchi 1tb.

now i'm going nuts with the os installation: i can't install it.

i tried to download the os from apple store and it says: your computer is not compatibile.

i tried to load the os on an usb stick and if i try to boot from usb shows a circle with a slash and everything freezes.

now i tried the net installer: it downloaded the os for almost 3 hours and now, after the first reboot it says "i can't install os mountain lion, please try again"

what the &&@! is going on? there some kind of apple hardware protection over here?!

my hardware is

mac mini i7 ghz, 4 gb ddr 3 1600 and hd 4000

thank you!

Added a 120 gig OZC Vertex Plus to my 2.3 i7 Mini yesterday. Only problem I ran into was the holes on the drive didn't match up with the antenna thingy. Only 1 screw is holding it all in place. I turned it over and shook it real good and it held just fine...<shrug>

Mini is screaming right along for me without issue.

I added a corsair force 3 to my mini, and got only 143mbs in black magic disk speed test. Drive was rated at 500mbs so I got bummed out and took the drive out and will return it tomorrow. Gotta say installing a drive in the mini is the most frustrating thing I've done in a long time.

Yes I also added a SSD drive yesterday

My Mac Mini (late 2012) is the base model (4GB Ram, 500GB HDD)

I added this SSD: Crucial CT512M4SSD2 with 512GB

The boot up time improved drastically:

Old system wit HDD: 47 seconds

New system with SSD: 17 seconds

Unfortunately I damaged my infrared connector by pulling out the board with still connected IR connector :-(

So Infrared not working any more.

Does anyone know if the infrared components are completely the same as in the 2011 model?

I added a Samsung 830 128GB (MZ-7PC128B/WW) and experienced the same problems as Brett with only 1 screw holding the antenna and the SSD lying in the mac mini without any screw holding it; shook it too and seems nice though. I cloned the old system via carbon copy cloner, after reseting the parameters via cmd + alt + p +r on start-up everything is running preety fast.

Update:

Just added upgraded another two MacMinis with Samsung 830 128 GB SSDs. Everything went well, all screws fit this time, didn't have to remove the logic board as well.

I added a Samsung 830 256GB as well. Did NOT have to remove the logic board btw - you can remove the hdd easily with only having fan, plastic thing and wifi antenna removed! the ssd fits perfectly with 2 screws, which go into 2 holes @the side of your mac mini. After enabling TRIM and adding 16GB Ram this thing clearly is performant as %%^#. Did not miss an i7 cpu yet :)

I added an OWC 120Gb 6G SSD to the stock terabyte on my i7 2.3 mini. Not really broken in to anything harder than an old G5 before, other than adding RAM to MBPs.

I had to take it slowly and carefully and did have to backtrack a couple of steps when reassembling to get the new SSD to seat properly but all went smoothly, nothing broke, and I now have a quad core i7 with 16Gb of RAM, a fast SSD for the system and a slower but large data drive. Which is nice.

Well I have been using the Samsung 830 and Crucial M4 for some time and no problem (not in a Mac though)

I find they behave better if you set them up properly before installing too. - not absolutely necessary but good practice in my mind

The easiest way to align an SSD is to create an aligned partition on the SSD with the help of Diskpart. Open an elevated command prompt and run the following sequence of commands – each line followed by Enter.

Diskpart

List disk

Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your SSD in List disk)

Clean

Create partition primary align=1024

Format fs=ntfs quick

Active (assuming you want to install an OS)

Exit

Note: If you want to create a 100MB partition with alignment, the create command is:

Create partition primary size=100 align=1024

The size unit is always MB.

Verification

If you want to verify the alignment (e.g. for a SSD where you are not certain whether the proper alignment was done), you use the following commands.

Diskpart

List disk

Select disk n

List partition

I bought a late 2012 and installed a 128 GB SSD from OWC, but instead of using carbon copy cloner, I just formatted both the drives and installed mac 10.8 via internet recovery.

If I try and boot the mini, I get a circle with slash image. BUT, if I set it into target disk mode, I can use the hard drive in the mini as the boot disk for my laptop.

Anyone know where I can get the mac mini disk image or special files that the mini needs to boot?

== Keep in mind that adding the additional drive will require that you completely disassemble the Mac Mini. This is no small task and took me about an hour to complete fully. ==

That being said the before and after - 4GB Ram + 1TB spindle vs 16GB Ram 512GB 850 Pro SSD speeds are MONUMENTALLY different and WORTH THE EFFORT.

Before:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A6...

and after:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A6...

I have added a Samsung 512 GB 850 Pro and 500 GB EVO drive with the fixit.com Kit and 16GB (2x8GB) corsair sticks of Ram to my October 2012 2.3GHz Mac Mini. I would say that all you need is the MB removal tool and a T6 and T8 and (T8 Security), though I think it is important that your tools be long bladed as a couple of times you are removing screws at an angle. The improvement is awesome and I use the EVO as the time machine drive. I am very happy with the kit though the walk throughs failed at key steps and they really should have a put it back together walk through rather than saying "do this in reverse". I used the fixit magnetic mat and it served the purpose beautifully, holding the screws in place until I was ready to replace them. The marker is a nice fine tip which made making notes in the boxes nice. I used two different guides for the teardown and rebuild.