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Tuesday May 10, 2005 12:12 pm
HOW TO: Back Up And Upgrade The Mac mini Hard Drive
Okay, let me preface this by saying I know how hard it can be to bring yourself to pry open your quaint little Mac. The thing is, if you bring it to a service center, they will pry it open themselves and charge you for doing so. While it is daunting, it really is a great learning experience.
MATERIALS USED:
- Mac mini
- Replacement hard drive
- Thin putty knife
- Small Phillips screwdriver (magnetized preferred)
- iPod
- Backup 2.02
The first thing I did was back up everything to the iPod photo. The easiest way to do this is to reset the iPod, holding the Select and Menu buttons. Once the iPod reboots, hold down the Select and Play/Pause buttons to enable Target Disk Mode. The iPod will now act as an external hard drive. Start Backup, and select everything you want to save. I chose just about everything. Once everything is backed up to the iPod, you are good to go as far as proceeding with the upgrade.
So, to get started you are going to need to disconnect everything and turn your Mac mini upside down. Looking at the underside of the computer, it becomes obvious that there is no simple way to open it up. As noted in multiple places elsewhere, time to get out the putty knife. Be sure it’s clean and dry. Now shove it between the white plastic and the metal casing. Push it down until it stops, and then push firmly towards the center of the mini. You should hear a few satisfying pops. Do note that a pop and a crack are two different things. The crack is bad.
After popping the two sides and the front, you can lift the innards of the mini away from the cover. Now it’s time to go to work. At this point it’s time to break out the small Phillips screwdriver. The first think you want to do it remove the DVD drive. There are six screws in total holding it in place. The two in back are the most difficult to get out unless you have a small, thin screwdriver. After the six screws are out, the drive is easily slipped out of the daughterboard. You will notice that the hard drive is right underneath the drive, but it cannot be removed just yet. Lay the disc drive somewhere safe, and move on.
The next thing you need to do is remove the black housing from the motherboard itself. Now, if you have Bluetooth and/or Airport Express built-in to your Mac, you will need to unclip the antennas so they do not get in the way. They do look sensitive, but do not worry. Unclipping them from the casing is a snap, and the wiring is durable. There are three screws holding his housing in place, which are all located in corners. Once the screws are removed, you can lift out the casing.
There is one more piece that needs to be removed before you can get to the drive. The cooling fan is the easiest part to remove in this process. There are four tiny screws holding it in place. Remove them and the fan slides right out, giving you access to all the screws you will need to deal with to get that hard drive out.
Four larger screws hold the hard drive in. Remove them all, and the hard drive can be pulled away from the daughterboard. At this point you just need to work backwards. Put your new drive in the old drive’s place. Be sure to align the pins correctly – the set of four pins, which are at the right side of the drive, do not need to be plugged in. Screw in the hard drive, and your replacement is set. You can now screw in the fan, black casing, DVD drive, and replace the wireless antennas if you have them. You can plug everything in and test it before replacing the cover if you wish.
If your drive is brand new, this is where you will want to know what you are doing. I would have saved myself a good hour of frustration if I knew how to proceed at this point. Luckily, John Battistini was hanging out in #gizmodo and knew exactly what I was doing wrong. What happened was that after putting everything back together, I put in my Tiger installation disc, but the only drive that the setup process was allowing me to install on was my iPod. I took apart and put together the mini another two times before I went to seek help. It turns out that you need to go into the Utilities menu and format the disc to prep it for the OS X installation. Once I did that, everything went smoothly.
After going through the initial OS X setup, I downloaded the Backup 2.02 program so that I could restore from the iPod. My backup was about 27 GB, and the restore took about 10 minutes. Once complete, I rebooted and just about all of my settings were the way I left them. There were a few programs that needed to be reinstalled, but it was no big deal.
As for the actual hard drive upgrade? I have noticed a definite speed increase. We will have a follow-up article looking at the drive we used. The only real hurdle in this process is popping the cap off of the computer. The fear of breaking or damaging the aesthetics of the mini always loom in your mind when you pick up the putty knife. Quench that fear, and it really is a breeze.
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Comments:
“4200-RPM drive was just holding me back. It was time to upgrade to a 5400 RPM”
LOL! Messed up man! thats just not fast, its sad. U should have gone for a 7200rpm drive and could of really seen a difference.
Reply to this: comment
“Small Phillips screwdriver (magnetized preferred)”
and no magnetized objects around computer parts
Reply to this: comment
I recently made the same upgrade on my Mini.
I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an image of my original Hard disk, then I swaped the disks.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
I used this usb adaptor so I could mount both Hard Disks at the same time.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812156001
It comes with a 3.5 to 2.5 adaptor, comes in very handy.
It worked flawlessly.
Reply to this: comment
What backup application did you use?
Could you please provide a link to it???
Reply to this: comment
Whoo, hang on. Before you go slaming a 7200 rpm in there think about the heat generated. The Mac Mini was designed not to need to many fans. The 5400, albeit slow, is the happy medium between the slow less heat 4200 rpm and a 7200 rpm. If you can pull off a 7200 heat generation in there then by all means cram one in and stuff a little more ram in that little cuttie and rev that sucker up. Untill you are read to go big and the heat can go to h3ll then stay back at 5400 rpm.
Reply to this: comment
What backup program did you use? Was it the Apple Backup program? Because that is only for .mac users? If you don’t have .mac and got it to work or that is a different program, please share.
Reply to this: comment
I just upgraded 3 Mac Minis (did i pay some royalty to McDonalds when i purchased those ... lol) with 1 GB Ram and a 5400 RPM Fujitsu 40 GB/8MB cache (a 7200 rpm drive would increase only about 10-15 % more but cost almost twice).
150 U$ extra but those MiniMacs are rocking cheapo SuperMacs now.
It was a piece of cake to open the cases using the putty knive, just handle with care same as you should handle women. 2 sturdy but friendly “clacks” will reveal all
the inner secrets and - Woaah! - well not pink inside but blue - my favoured color; a zillion little silver coloured ants crawling all around.
By the way after changing the drive, i packed the “old” drive into a 9 US$ aluminium
USB casing (fits my chest pocket!) , restarted with the OS X CD and instead of installing the system new just opened Disk Utility from there, formatted the new drive, restarted again with OS X CD and with Disk Utility now run “restore” so to mirror the “old” drive’s content into the new drive - it seemed faster than installing the system all-over.
- any ATA-6 2.5” 9.5 mm notebook drive will do. 8 MB cache seems more important
than 7200 over 5400 rpm
- I’ve seen the RAM type of the MiniMac advertised as PC2700 333 mHz but in fact Apple ship’s the machine with PC3200 memory which is cheaper. Don’t waste your money with the PC2700 RAM!
ok hope i could prodive some input with that.
Reply to this: comment
<i>It turns out that you need to go into the Utilities menu and format the disc to prep it for the OS X installation. Once I did that, everything went smoothly.</i>
I was wondering if you could clarify this step. I am not sure whether I am to do this before or after swapping out the drives.
Reply to this: comment
after swapping the drives of course, the new HD must be formated in order to be recognized by the installer. After formatting, make a restart again holding down the “C” key so to boot once more from the installer CD, then you can choose to install the new system on it.
Reply to this: comment
How do you enter the Utilities Menu to format the new hard drive??
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YOUR ALL NOOBS!!!! JUST LIKE THE GUY ON MY SITE!!!!!
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actually the average 7200 rpm [8ms seek] drive is 36% faster than a 5400 [12.5ms] rpm drive.. and a 10,000 rpm [4.5ms seek] is nearly twice as fast as a 7200 rpm drive..
Reply to this: comment
I just got a new mac mini with an core duo processor, with a 60 gig hard drive. Went to Best Buy and bought a seagate 120 GB 5400rpm drive, took the mini all apart, and when I got the apple drive out, it’s not the standard pin configuration pug on the HD, it is a tab connection, ugh...I guess that is the serial ATA?
Reply to this: comment
What if, once the drives are swapped Tiger doesn’t boot with C held down? I get the dreaded “flashing ?”. I try Open Firmware and can “eject cd”, but somehow mac-boot fails. I can eject CD also by “top-right keyboard” or holding down the mouse on boot.
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I connect my MacMini to my MacBook via Firewire and boot the Mini (T held down) and voila, it ewcognized the new Mini drive. I could eveb read DOS files someone left. I did an erase in disk utilities - BUT - can I format the Mini drive over Firewire as so far the Mini doesn’t boot (C held down) my MaxOXS CD.
Reply to this: comment
Hi Olaf
CD drive seems to work, and the drive is recognized, so there should not be a hardware problem.
Insert the system DVD into your MacMini and boot it by holding down the C key so it will boot from the system CD, not the internal (still DOS formatted) new drive in the MacMini. Once the system is up from the CD, use the Disk utility to format the drive; you have to restart the MacMini once more with the option C key and boot from the CD, then use the installer to install the system on the MacMini’s drive.
Alternatively, you can format the drive and then install the system it via the Macbook firewire connection, saving you 2 reboots.
Reply to this: comment
yeah i got a core duo and want to bump up the hd too from 80gb to 500 gb. theres a sata 5400 running in there by default, would it have a prob with a faster larger hd?
Reply to this: comment
I seem to be about where Olaf was.
Have a new drive that I know works, but can’t get
the Tiger install disk to boot when this new drive
is set up as the Mac Mini’s main drive.
It’s a 120GB Fujitsu MHV2120AH-R. I can put it into
a USB adapter for 2.5” PATA drives, the Mac Mini sees it and allows me to format it. So the drive works. (The Tiger install CD does not allow me to
install OS-X to a USB drive though.) The Mac Mini
can read and writefiles on it when it is set up as
a USB drive.
I put that Fujitsu drive into the Mac Mini, replacing
the 40GB Seagate drive that had been there.
Then powered up with the Tiger CD-ROM inserted
and the C key held down. After about a minute of
displaying the Apple logo, it then displays a circle
with a slash through it.
When I replace the 120GB Fujitsu with a Toshiba
MK3018GAP salvaged from a Windows laptop,
the Mac Mini does successfully boot to the Tiger
install prompt.
So my guess is that the Fujitsu PATA interface is
somehow not compatible with the Mac Mini.
Any pointers?
Jerry
Reply to this: comment
The Mac Mini uses PC5300 DDR2 Ram memory (at least
those late in 2006 and newer), my PC store sold me
some PC5400 which is the same, its 667MHz rated and
matches all the specs of the same memory shown
on Apples website. Usually the Walmart ACP memory
is advertised online as the same ones that will work
in the Mini but Walmart forces you to order it you cant
get it at their store.
The hard drives are 5400 RPM SATA drives, using
the small connector not the little tiny cable you are
used to using in desktop PC sata connections. You can
access 3 to 4 GIGS Of RAM if you have a CORE 2 DUO
processor, these are Socket M Intel Chips, expensive
almost the same price as buying a new mac mini.
Leopard being 64 Bit lets you access more RAM when
you also have a CORE 2 DUO processor. So using
two 2 Gigabyte RAM chips would activate the 128bit
feature for accessing memory faster. Similar to having
2 or more processors on one chip. Same with a PC
you have to have a gig in each RAM slot in order
for the multithreading to work.
Reply to this: comment
anybody know if a Western Digital Scorpio 5400 rpm SATA drive will work in the mini? My mini’s HD just died out of nowhere and I can’t access it with nay data recovery discs, et al. Bummed. Cheaper to put in a new drive than let tech people at Apple or elsewhere do it. Already upgraded the RAM myself after I bought it, so I’m not concerned about it at this point
Reply to this: comment
on another note: is it even necessary to replace the internal drive on the mini? Could I just connect an external drive and run the OS from that all of the time?
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Just to clarfiy, this post is related to the first generation macMinis back in 2005. I haven’t checked out the new models or their need to upgrade as the first set still works perfectly smooth.
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I just did the HD switch today on the Mini, with a Seagate super ATA-100 160 BG drive. My mini is the last of the pre-Intel ones, so the SATA drives mentioned here weren’t compatible (the mini came with a Hitachi HD with 43 or 45 pins). It wasn’t very hard at all. However, I decided to load it with Leopard OS since it was a clean new HD. Set it up at my office and it worked fine, but then I brought it home and now experiencing problems with connecting to the internet, etc. Airport (which worked fine at the office) can’t find my home network, etc. etc. Oh computers.
Reply to this: comment
I replaced my hard drive with a 7200 RPM 200GB
now the fan in my mini won’t turn off.
I know that the fan being on is a default when the operating system doesn’t launch. But it has, what can I do to get this thing working right? I downloaded the latest OSX upgrades, restarted, shutdown, what’s next? Help?
James
Reply to this: comment
@JAmes M
Late comment, but did you get the front fan cable connected correctly? Damaging that connection can cause it to go on and stay on.
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Wow, i will use this info sometime. Thanks. Hard drive is main device in computer.
Reply to this: comment
“Hard drive is main device in computer.”
I am in awe of your extremely accurate and insightful comment.
Reply to this: comment 1 reply
Whoa! Easy there M.C. Hammer!
Reply to this: comment | thread
Why did you take all that apart… its not needed… remove the cover… pop the WIFI antenna off… pop the fan connector off near the front… pop the optical drive ribbon off… remove 4 screws that hold down the black housing… remember what corner the longer screw came from…
Now you have access to RAM and HDD…
Oh and most 7200 RPM drives make less heat then 5400 RPM drives, i’ve had a 7200RPM 160 gig drive in my mac mini for a year… now i replaced it with a 7200RPM 320 gig drive that crates less heat then the old one…
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I don’t get how to format a brand new drive… since, before the OS is installed, there is no disk utility to perform the operation. I can’t even see/access the new drive in target disk mode! Help please!!!
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@ Laptopius:
I don’t think your going to find this information very useful if you are trying to inform us that the “hard drive is main device in computer” hahaha
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