|
|
Mac mini HDD question - to FW or not to FW
|
|
|
|
Forum Regular
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Durham, NC, USA
Status:
Offline
|
|
I have a Mac mini - 1.25GHz with 1GB memory. The 40GB drive in it recently bit the dust. Unfortunately, since I'm a fairly mechanically-inclined fella, the warranty is void.
What I have done in the meantime, since I can't afford another laptop drive just yet, is put a spare 20GB drive in a firewire enclosure. I then booted from my install DVD, used Disk Utility to prepare the drive, and installed OS X directly onto the firewire drive.
(With the 40GB drive in place in the mini, it won't boot from CD at all. The drive makes awful noises. I have removed the internal HDD to restore boot-from-CD functionality. Removing the drive and trying to access it's contents using SpinRite 6 from grc.com fails miserably.)
My main question is this - what are the disadvantages to leaving the system with only a FW HDD? Could I go and get a 300GB 7200RPM HDD to put in this FW enclosure and just use that as my main mini HDD? Are there any reasons that WOULDN'T work?
|
2.4GHz Macbook. 22" LCD. External 640GB HD. Yum.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
Status:
Offline
|
|
Disadvantage? You have to always keep the Firewire drive plugged in and you only have one Firewire port, so you can't plug a video camera, iSight, audio device, etc in.
300GB? Depends on your enclosure (some only support up to 128GB/137 billion bytes), but most will be fine with it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Forum Regular
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Durham, NC, USA
Status:
Offline
|
|
Thanks, Mark. As it turns out, it looks like we're getting an 80GB 5400RPM 8MB cache notebook drive for the mini after all.
One of the things I really like about the firewire enclosure that I currently have is that it has another firewire port on the enclosure - so one port to plug into the mac mini, and then a 2nd port to plug in an iPod or another drive, etc. I picked it up from Newegg - it's by Bytecc and has been working really well for me.
So, it looks like we'll use the 80GB drive as the main system drive.
My next question would be this: How hard would it be to relocate user folders to an external drive? My home folder currently resides on Mac OS / Users. I'd like it to reside on an external drive. Easy? Hard? Toying with the devil? =)
|
2.4GHz Macbook. 22" LCD. External 640GB HD. Yum.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Oct 2004
Status:
Offline
|
|
I use an external FW HD with my Mini because my HD broke too. I got it replaced under warranty though.
I used a program called SuperDuper to clone the drive. It keeps everything exactly the same. When my Mini came back fixed, I just cloned the external FW drive back to the internal.
I had considered running my FW drive all the time but the one I have is noisy and like you, the broken HD affected other things. Also, my FW drive has a fault whereby it unmounts itself sometimes while using it. I think it's an issue with the enclosure but I had considered it might be because I have it daisy chained to a DVD burner. The DVD burner goes into my Mini and the HD into the burner. I heard somewhere that FW devices also fight for priority on a chain but I don't know if that's true.
The setup I have is generally reliable and I use the HD for backups mainly but also just extra space. I have a 40GB internal 5400 and an 80GB 7200 external. I was in a hurry as my HD was breaking so I didn't have time to shop around so I paid way to much for my external drive and it's really big. I should have gone for something like the Lacie porche portable drive:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?LAC-300804
The advantage to the one I got is that it takes standard IDE drives so I can put in a cheap HD if it breaks. It takes CD/DVD burners too.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mac Elite
Join Date: Sep 2005
Status:
Offline
|
|
I use a 120 GB (soon to be 300-400 GB) hard drive in a Firewire enclosure, since my Mini doubles as an AFP/SMB file server for my network.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mac Elite
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: UK
Status:
Offline
|
|
Im sure you have thought about this, jamster, but why not put a 7200 RPM notebook drive in your mini. Im not up on prices, so I wouldnt know the difference in price between the 80 gig you said you were putting in the mini and a 7200 RPM drive, but I know Hitachi do a drive, i think its the 7K60 (or something like that) that is 7200 RPM notebook, which would give your mini a nice little speed bump.
Just a suggestion
|
iMac Core Duo 1.83 Ghz | 1.25GB RAM | 160HD, MacBook Core Duo 1.83 Ghz | 13.3" | 60HD | 1.0GB RAM
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Forum Rules
|
|
|
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is Off
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|