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Mac Mini - one step forward...
... one step backwards.
I pulled six from the garbage. All booted - if slowly. I gave away two.
When I replaced the slow hard drive in the first one, I couldn't get the disk to fit right - but it works. There are several guides to do this online and I followed the one with the least steps: remove bottom, remove four screws, wiggle out the old drive, remove connector, add new drive. The minis are built like laptops and the fit is extremely fussy.
I installed a newish OS and all went well. Then I installed Open Core Legacy patcher and updated the software to almost the newest OS. Go me! One step forward.
The second one I followed the more complex and hopefully would make it little easier to pull out the hard drive. This included removing the fan and a shroud next to it. It didn't make swapping the drives easier by much and when I went to install the fan again - I broke the fan connector on the motherboard. One step backwards. This made me very upset since I had spent a lot of time - more than an hour - carefully doing everything... for nothing. With a broken mainboard it's parts.
So if you every want to replace the hard drive on a Mac Mini - DON'T PULL THE FAN OUT.
The third one I did the four screws and wiggle and was done in fifteen minutes.
It's said that experience is based on the amount of equipment you break trying to learn things. I've learned that at least with Mac Minis - you unplug as few things as you can to replace things.
Still, since the Macs cost me nothing I'm only out the time I spent breaking... learning things.
-m
I pulled six from the garbage. All booted - if slowly. I gave away two.
When I replaced the slow hard drive in the first one, I couldn't get the disk to fit right - but it works. There are several guides to do this online and I followed the one with the least steps: remove bottom, remove four screws, wiggle out the old drive, remove connector, add new drive. The minis are built like laptops and the fit is extremely fussy.
I installed a newish OS and all went well. Then I installed Open Core Legacy patcher and updated the software to almost the newest OS. Go me! One step forward.
The second one I followed the more complex and hopefully would make it little easier to pull out the hard drive. This included removing the fan and a shroud next to it. It didn't make swapping the drives easier by much and when I went to install the fan again - I broke the fan connector on the motherboard. One step backwards. This made me very upset since I had spent a lot of time - more than an hour - carefully doing everything... for nothing. With a broken mainboard it's parts.
So if you every want to replace the hard drive on a Mac Mini - DON'T PULL THE FAN OUT.
The third one I did the four screws and wiggle and was done in fifteen minutes.
It's said that experience is based on the amount of equipment you break trying to learn things. I've learned that at least with Mac Minis - you unplug as few things as you can to replace things.
Still, since the Macs cost me nothing I'm only out the time I spent breaking... learning things.
-m