Here's a great little tutorial for a DIY upgrade to your Mac Mini complete with photos.
Slash your way inside Apple's Mac Mini
1TB putty knife adventure
By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • 6th March 2009
Photos You can break into Apple's new Mac mini, but it's nerve-wracking. However, if you do, you can up its storage capacity to one terabyte.
On Wednesday, the folks at Mac repair-shop and parts-supplier iFixit tore a new 20-inch iMac into pieces. Today, they did the same with the new Mac mini. And, after doing so, they gave the Mac Mini and optical-drivectomy, added a second hard drive, and RAIDed up the pair to make a 1TB volume.
Popping open a Mac mini is not for the faint of heart. Unlike the iMac teardown, which requires only a full complement of Torx drivers and a pair of dent-puller suction cups, disassembling a Mac mini requires a putty knife, serious leverage, and nerves of steel.
Before we pry apart Apple's dwarfish desktop, let's take a look at its three main incarnations since the Mac Mini's original release in January 2005.
The original Mac Mini was a PowerPC G4 machine, which went through a few upgrades before it was discontinued in February 2006. The PowerPC G5 never made it into a Mac Mini, running too hot for its tiny confines.
The first Intel Core Duo/Solo Mac Mini showed up in February 2006, ditching the modem and doubling the number of USB ports. It went through one processor upgrade, then received an Intel Core 2 Duo in August 2007.
Earlier this week, it received a more-powerful build-to-order Core 2 Duo and an additional USB port, swapped its DVI port for a Mini-DVI port and a Mini DisplayPort, upped its Firewire port from FW400 to FW800, and moved to an Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated-graphics subsystem.... [more]
Slash your way inside Apple's Mac Mini
1TB putty knife adventure
By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • 6th March 2009
Photos You can break into Apple's new Mac mini, but it's nerve-wracking. However, if you do, you can up its storage capacity to one terabyte.
On Wednesday, the folks at Mac repair-shop and parts-supplier iFixit tore a new 20-inch iMac into pieces. Today, they did the same with the new Mac mini. And, after doing so, they gave the Mac Mini and optical-drivectomy, added a second hard drive, and RAIDed up the pair to make a 1TB volume.
Popping open a Mac mini is not for the faint of heart. Unlike the iMac teardown, which requires only a full complement of Torx drivers and a pair of dent-puller suction cups, disassembling a Mac mini requires a putty knife, serious leverage, and nerves of steel.
Before we pry apart Apple's dwarfish desktop, let's take a look at its three main incarnations since the Mac Mini's original release in January 2005.
The original Mac Mini was a PowerPC G4 machine, which went through a few upgrades before it was discontinued in February 2006. The PowerPC G5 never made it into a Mac Mini, running too hot for its tiny confines.
The first Intel Core Duo/Solo Mac Mini showed up in February 2006, ditching the modem and doubling the number of USB ports. It went through one processor upgrade, then received an Intel Core 2 Duo in August 2007.
Earlier this week, it received a more-powerful build-to-order Core 2 Duo and an additional USB port, swapped its DVI port for a Mini-DVI port and a Mini DisplayPort, upped its Firewire port from FW400 to FW800, and moved to an Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated-graphics subsystem.... [more]
