monokitty

My current Mac mini (which is performing great for me), has an Apple standard 80GB, 4200-rpm 2.5" hard drive in it; despite wanting more storage space, I was potentially considering upgrading to a 100/120GB HD, with a minimum 5400-rpm speed; in your opinion (especially those who have performed this kind of upgrade before), is it worth going all the way up to a 7200-rpm hard drive for performance purposes? I'm not concerned with the propsect that such a faster drive will make more noise or potentially produce more heat. I'm also equally uninterested in an external solution as the fewer external devices I have, the better (yes, including the Mini Stack HD from LaCie).

__________________
ACMT
Mac mini (Mid 2011) 2.7 GHz i7, 8GB RAM, Crucial M4 256GB SSD + 500GB + 1TB FW800 OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini
iPhone 4S • iPod nano 8GB • Sound System Audio Engine A2 • Display UltraSharp U2412M 24"

Macaholic

Well, I opted for a Ministack, as I needed more ports!

Upgrading the internal hard drive might be an interesting weekend reno project, however. As for speed, well, they're all fairly cheap and I'd go with the fastest you can get.

__________________
32GB iPad 1 WiFi. 2011 Mac Mini Server (used as a workstation) 2GHz quad-core i7/8GB/1TB, 24" BenQ LCD, 17" NEC LCD, Magic Trackpad. MacBook 2.4GHz Core2 Duo/2GB/200GB/DL-DVDRW. Apple TV 2, 32" flat panel TV, Logitech DiNovo Edge BT keyboard & trackpad. >5TB of FW drives, 16GB iPhone 4S. In memoriam: my Sawtooth "Frankenmac" with upgraded dual 1.3GHz G4/2GB/360GB striped RAID/DVDRW/ATI Radeon 9000 Pro

John Clay

I'd go for a 7200RPM drive, in the largest size you can get at that speed (I think it's 120GB?).

__________________
iMac 27" 3.4GHz Core i7, 20GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD • 27" LED Cinema Display
MacBook Pro 13" 2.8GHz Core i7, 16GB RAM, 120GB SSD
iPhone 5 32GB • iPad 2 WiFi + 3G 64GB
Mac mini 2.3GHz Core i5, 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD (XBMC)
Synology DS1512+ NAS • DX513 Expansion • 20TB

zarquon

I recently upgraded a 1.25G mini to a 5400rpm, 160GB Seagate. I took less than an hour (my first time popping open the mini) and went quite smoothly.
The original drive was the 5400rpm, 40GB drive - so the speed increase wasn't drastic - but noticable.

Z.

irontree

I was wondering, does a G4 mini uses the same type of drive as an Intel one? I too am thinking of upgrading the 60gb drive my Intel Mini came with.

Digital_Gary

No. Intel Mini's use SATA while G4 Mini's use PATA.

Here are some benchmarks showing differences between many of the 2.5" drives.

http://www.barefeats.com/hard56.html

macsackbut

Ditto, and I do find that booting off the Ministack boosts speed. Since you say you're not interested in an external solution, however, I can't give you any advice, but I would be VERY interested in hearing about what you do end up doing and how it turned out. Keep us posted.

__________________
MBP C2D 2.2/120GB/2GB (10.5.0)
G4 1.42 mini 80GB/1024/Combo/AP/BT (10.4.10); 20" ACD; miniStack+300GB; iSight; AirPort Express
G3 600 iBook 30GB/640/DVD-ROM/AP (10.4.10)
4G iPod (40GB) | 2G iPod nano (4 GB-red) | My Mac blog: Singing the Apple

da_jonesy

My suggestion would be to get an external 7200rpm firewire drive. Just pig it out at over 300GB and move your iTunes, iPhoto libraries to the external drive. I did this with my MacBook and it screams. Much less disk thrashing as everything application/OS related is happening on my main disk and anything related to data is happening on my external disk. Much more efficient approach... and easier as you don't have to pop open your Mini.