When cloning the Mac drive, there’s nothing else that needs to be done – everything is exactly as it was on the old drive - right down to the desktop wallpaper and screensaver. The upgrade would be the easy part - the installations and getting system settings to where I wanted them to be was the painstaking and consuming part. This was new territory for me because in the past, whenever I upgraded the hard drive on a newly-built PC, I had a new PC, but I still had to install Windows, all of my programs, drivers, settings, etc. Next I fired up Carbon Copy Cloner and after a couple clicks, I was making an exact, bootable clone of my existing Mac mini’s hard drive. Thankfully I already had my handy USB 2.0 universal drive adapter, so I hooked up the new 500GB drive to the Mac mini as an external drive. I found “How (and why) to clone your Mac hard drive” on and began cloning the Mac mini’s drive. But first, I needed to clone the Mac mini’s existing hard drive onto the new 500GB hard drive. The best how-to article I found was “Maximizing your Mac mini” on. I did lots of research on how to upgrade a Mac mini and even though I have over 15 years experience in building PCs from the ground up, I was still a little intimidated and wanted to make sure I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I wanted to go for a 1TB or larger drive, but I couldn’t find one at 9mm in height. This was an upgrade from 1GB RAM and a 120GB hard drive. I found 2 1GB sticks of RAM for $39 and a 500GB drive for $55.

My Mac mini was the early-2009 Intel based model and would support up to 2GB of RAM and a recommended 5400 RPM SATA drive no taller than 9mm to allow for airflow. I used Crucial’s Mac System Scanner to determine what kind of RAM limitations I had, and which RAM to purchase, and to find out what dimension SATA drive I needed to get. I’ve long since wanted to upgrade the Mac mini’s RAM and hard drive but I’ve been hesitant because 1) the small form factor and 2) it’s a Mac (despite knowing that any computer’s hardware is just hardware that I’m intimately familiar with).Īfter procrastinating for the better part of a year, I finally decided to upgrade the mini. Other than upgrading the RAM in my first iBook some seven years ago and the time I tore apart my terminal iMac just to see how it worked, I’ve never really tinkered with the guts of a Mac. Last month I gave our Mac mini a $10 internet speed boost by running CAT-5e through the attic and down a couple walls.

2017 mac mini hard drive upgrade