BY the way, the mid 2011 Mac mini will hold, use and acknowledge 16GB of ram. Yeah, I'm running 10GB right now and I'm waiting for another chip to get me to 12GB. I would go the whole 16, but I'm waiting for the 8GB chips to come down. Right now Newegg has the 8GB Singe channel Corsair for $139. Has anyone kept the OS drive and just replaced the extra 500GB hard drive in the i7 quad mac mini? They have 2 500gb drives and I want to replace the non OS one and use all of my photo processing apps in the SSD for faster processing.

I installed dual SSDs in my late model 2012 Mac mini. I’m running Catalina in it and it’s runs great. I was wondering if there is a trick

to get the secondary hard drive to run independently of the primary while using the secondary as as the HOME drive (storing files, photos,

music, etc) so that I have plenty of room for OS and APPs to run on my Primary drive.

I Installed the primary drive where the original Mac Hard drive sat. I manually dragged my home Icon over to the secondary SSD and restarted the Mac. The secondary has the Home (user) icon in it now and all of the files that were associated with it.

HOWEVER, what ever I do on the primary desktop the secondary seems to be mirroring. I realized that the desktop is linked to the HOME user in the secondary, but when I change anything on the desktop in the secondary drive it affects the primary. It’s as if there is some type of odd mirroring happening.

If anyone out there has done this type of custom install could you reply? Thanks so much!

I understand the concerns that have been posted about internal storage failure.

I use my computers for photo processing and what some may not know is that

up and coming “upgrades” to some software are not allowing programs to run

from externally stored applications (easy way to control license purchase).

Affinity Photo is one of them. Just thought I would throw that in the mix.

The other interesting question is;

how hard is it to keep storage INSIDE your Mac Mini secure, as opposed to keeping

External storage secure? I prefer to pick up one thing and walk out the door.

Once the R&D is completed these boards and components are very cheap to

produce and solder on. It’s always economics and what they are able to

“market” to the public.

If what Apple and others are selling do not fill the market void, then people

or a company will find a way to create it. That’s how Steve and Bill got started.

When re-inserting the power supply make certain the left side screw is seated in the secondary drive tray and

fulled secured to the metal casing frame then turn the entire housing upside down and slide the power supply into

place (careful of cables etc.)

There are two metal anchor points on the power supply, one on the very tip

that is inserted into the Mac Mini housing and the other is on the right side of the power supply that sits

into a plastic slot up against the side of the metal housing. Tried everything to get the points home so the right

secondary hard drive tray screw holes would line up with the power supply anchor holes. This worked the first try.