Apple Mac Mini 1TB Upgrade — Not Easy But Possible 95
designperfection9 writes "The new Mac mini is all well and good, but anybody hoping for gobfuls of extra capacity will come away disappointed. Apple's entry-level mini gets 120GB of storage, and it costs $175 to take that up the official 320GB maximum. Happily iFixit decided to step in and take matters into their own hands, with a nine-page pictorial guide to fitting your Mac mini with 1TB of storage." They're also offering a kit to accomplish the same end for $250 — that seems high to me now that 1TB external drives can be had for quite a bit less, and require no putty-knife action to install.
I hate when submitters do this... (Score:5, Informative)
The summary says the actual content is on iFixit, but the link goes to some useless blog which then links to iFixit.
Link directly to the content, include a via link if you want to reference where you got the link from.
For the record, the proper article URL where the actual content is follows:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Mac-mini-A1283-Terabyte-Drive/660/1 [ifixit.com]
Re:Hard Disk out, hard disk in (Score:5, Informative)
The Mac Mini takes notebook hard drives. They only go up to 500GB right now. Getting 1TB requires removing the optical drive, which now with this generation is SATA so it's actually compatible with decent-sized hard drives.
Re:Why am I not surprised? (Score:3, Informative)
What about the G3/G4 towers? Those are some of the easiest to work on machines out there. Pull the lever, lower the side of the case, tada! Easy to change drives, PCI cards, CPU, and memory. These were probably the best built Macs ever.
Pimp my karma... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why am I not surprised? (Score:3, Informative)
The amount of work involved in upgrading a Mac has, usually, been excessive.
This has only been true historically with the consumer models. The models that Apple designates for "professional" usually upgrade much easier. My current G5 has full access from a side door (as well as the current Mac Pro line) and even my old LC and 4400 had easily accessible PDS and PCI slots when the case is slid off. (My iMac G4 was the only machine I had I couldn't upgrade myself.) It's just that, as the "ease of use" brand in the industry, Apple's more famous machines are the all-in-one and laptop units that have the more cramped assembly and design.
Mini Form-Factor Drives (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firewire and USB (Score:3, Informative)
MiniStack 3 came out a couple of years back: http://www.newertech.com/products/ministackv3.php [newertech.com]
eSATA, FW800 and FW400, USB 2.0.
Re:Why am I not surprised? (Score:3, Informative)
The trouble is that Apple doesn't sell an upgradable machine unless you get a Mac Pro, which is CAN$2900 and up. If you want a modest Macintosh computer you have no easily upgradable options.