Nick,
If a new Mini is on the near horizon, then I can hold my breath and see
what it's like when it arrives. But a disk upgrade could always be
useful, even if I buy the new Mini later.
Re upgrading, memory and SSD are the highest of priorities. I already
have my eyes on solutions for the disk. I don't think I'd want to waste
one of four USB ports for a boot device, though, except if it was just
for short-term testing and setup. I'm thinking of paying Apple the
dollars, about a hundred fifty of them, to swap the drive and double the
memory for me (plus parts, of course). I just have to obtain the correct
sticks, as you say. Any advanced info before searching for info thereon
would be most appreciated.
Re the external MyBook with TM backups and samples on it, the samples
and other music production library stuff is all 100% duplicated on a
drive on a Windows machine, and even if that breaks, it can all be
re-downloaded from the sites from which it was purchased. Once the SSD
is installed in the Mini, that data gets moved there, giving the whole
3TB MyBook drive over to TM.
About the Mac Pro, I think I'm off that idea for good, and not just
because of your explanation. Yes, the ones I'm seeing on eBay are 2013
build models, therefore not upgradable. But with eight cores and 32GB
memory, I don't think any upgrading would even be necessary, with the
exception of swapping the internal drive it comes with for an SSD. What
kind of killed the whole idea for me is that I think these machines only
have SATA2 interfaces.
So let's talk more about booting from a USB-connected SSD. The
specifications really say it all. Have you any recommendations for an
adapter, caddy or enclosure for a SATA3 SSD? I don't really need one of
those big three-and-a-half-inch enclosures, and I've never met one I
really liked anyway. When I buy the SSD, I'll of course buy the
two-and-a-half-inch form factor unit that will fit into the Mini, but
I'd like to set it up and test with it before taking the Mini in for the
permanent transplant, which is why I'd want the enclosure or adapter.
Other than that, I don't think there are any other considerations to
ponder before starting to order parts and make appointments to have the
surgery done.
On 5/11/2018 4:11 AM, Nickus de Vos wrote:
Hi Steve
Firstly when talking Mac Pro I presume you are referring to the cheese grater,
since that’s the only Mac Pro which is upgradable, the newer trashcan isn’t at
all upgradable when it comes to drives and RAM.
The last cheese grater is already older than your current 2012 Mac Mini,
without some hacking the last model cheese grater can for example not run High
Sierra where your Mini is still officially supported. The other problem with
the cheese grater is the wifi and bluetooth on it which can’t be upgraded very
easily, same with the USB-2.
I saw a post on another platform the other day of a guy who upgraded a cheese
grater, it took him a lot of tinkering and hacking, a lot of searching and
expensive Ebay shopping, but eventually he could upgrade the wifi and bluetooth
to more current versions, he installed USB-3 and he installed PCI SSD storage.
The entire modding process eventually costed him more than what he bought the
second hand machine for, and in the end he commented that it was probably not
the smartest money he ever spent.
I own a late 2013 iMac which probably has much the same internals as your Mini,
also 1 TB drive, also 8 GB RAM, I gave this machine of mine some new life the
other day. The iMac can’t be opened up easily to upgrade the internals and I
wasn’t willing to pay Apple to do it. I rather decided to get a external USB-3
SSD to be used as the boot drive. I installed High Sierra on the external SSD
along with all my other stuff and now I use the internal 1 TB HDD only as mass
storage. The iMac runs like a dream, it’s nice and fast again, almost as fast
as my 2015 MBP with 256 GB SSD and double the RAM.
If you are very confident in your abilities or have a friend who can do it,
then I suggest you install a SSD in your Mini to be used as your boot drive,
512 GB even 256 GB should do it. I can’t remember off hand, but if I recall
doing this on the 2012 Mini is still quite easy, I doubt any special tools are
needed for example.
Next while you are at it and if you have the budget, upgrade the RAM to 16 GB,
just read up and make double certain you get the correct RAM.
As for your external drive with your samples and time machine backup, have you
got a backup of all samples and another time machine drive or is this your only
copy of this data?
I suggest you get a second external hard drive of the same or bigger size and
make a clone of your external drive so that you have 2 copies of that data. I
also suggest you partition the drives to split your sample library and time
machine to two partitions.
If you can’t install a SSD in to your Mini then do what I did, use a external
SSD as your boot drive,, but SSD is definately the way to go here. Another
advantage of doing it this way is that you can very easily reuse that external
SSD for something else should you stop using your Mini one day.
Before you purchase anything, maybe wait till WWDC next month, a new Mac Mini
model is long overdue and I hope we will see one announced then.
Nick
On 11 May 2018, at 03:50, Steve Matzura <numb...@noisynotes.com> wrote:
I have a quad core i7 late 2012 Mac Mini with the stock 5400rpm 1TB drive and
8GB RAM. I use it exclusively for music reation and education (mainly my own)
with Logic and Pro Tools. My sample libraries are stored on an external MyBook
3TB drive which is also shared with time Machine. Consequently, once per hour,
there's a little gligtchiness sometimes if I happen to be playing something
that draws heavily on sampled content when TM runs. Granted, it only lasts for
a second or two because the machine does not require much in the way of
backups, as very little on it changes.
So I'm starting to think it's time for an upgrade. But what to upgrade?
Clearly more memory would help, as well as replacing the mechanical drive with
a solid-state drive. There's also the main hardware, which surely can't be
upgradable to the next operating system forever. I ran into this with a 2009
iMac when Sierra was released. For disk replacement, Crucial has a 2TB drive
for five hundred dollars--that's just twenty-five cents US per gig--a very nice
price. I'm quite fond of Crucial solid-state disks, as I already own two other
smaller units used in other machine. I figure if I changed out the 1TB rotating
drive for a 2TB SSD and moved all my sample libraries to that drive, that would
also eliminate the USB 3 slow-down (if there really is one, which I'm not
convinced there is), then that USB drive would be used exclusively for Time
Machine backups.
Another option is to purchase an empty Mac Pro and put the Crucial 2TB drive
and lots of memory into it, then set the rest of it up as above. But how long
will a Mac Pro last before it, too, can no longer be upgraded? With the price
of Apple hardware ever increasing, will I eventually get priced out of
upgrading?
Everybody says it's bad practice to mix system and data files on a drive. But
if it's a solid-state drive, how could this be bad?
If I obtain a Mac Pro, which model year has the highest expandability quotient?
i.e., which one can I keep the longest and expand the most into the future
before it won't be expandable/ upgradable any more, like my old 2009 iMac
turned out to be when Sierra was released.
So, what would you do?
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