DIY: Replace your intel mac mini's hard disk drive
Although there are lots of tutorials and guides out there in the internets which try to guide you through the process, I found most of them are outdated (their contents applying only for PowerPC minis only, whose layout is different from intel minis) or confusing (dark pictures, etc). So after I managed to replace my mini's hard disk yesterday, and not breaking anything (in fact, I'm writing with it now!) I feel with authority enough for writing a how-to.
If you're willing to replace your mini's hard disk, I recommend you read this completely first so that you get an idea of what is needed and then decide if you're adventurous enough for doing so. Although I would say, it wasn't as difficult as I was expecting.
Tools you will need
Scratching knife, putty knife or however you call it.
You'll find them in your favourite real hardware store, in the painting area. If you don't look over 18 years they will ask you for an ID, just in case you're trying to commit crime with it or something (!!!).
Philips screwdrivers
I just needed these two sizes. There's no need for any other exotic format. This is how philips screwdrivers look; they are just the usual plus sign-shaped screwdrivers (+):
An external hard drive for backing up your data
I have read of people using their ipods in disk mode, but mine is just too small for holding even my songs (it's a 4gb mac mini) so I used an external USB disk with plenty of space.
A new hard drive
You'll need a Serial ATA 2.5" 5400rpm drive. Normal ATA drives won't work, basically because the connectors are absolutely incompatible. I chose a 160 GB disk.
Before opening the case
We need to duplicate the current contents in the hard disk, so that we can restore all into the new disk later. I used SuperDuper! because I heard it was faster, but I think you can also use MacOSX's Disk Utility. (I haven't tried the latter for duplicating).
The ideal would be to have some external enclosure into which you could place your new SATA drive temporarily, duplicate everything into it and then you wouldn't need to reinstall anything once it is in place of the old hard disk. In reality I hadn't a SATA enclosure so I just backed everything up to that external hard disk. It takes a while, like 2 hours, to back up the whole disk (it was a 60GB disk). So you could play Metroid 3 in your wii meanwhile.
Apart from that I also copied my stuff (i.e. non System folders or Applications, just my data) to a different computer just to be safe :-)
Opening the case
Now comes the dirty stuff! This may hurt, mainly your psyche, since it looks like you're going to break your little precious mini. But if you're careful nothing wrong should happen.
Common sense advice: disconnect everything. Pretty obvious but there's always crazy people around there.
There's nothing you can do on the top side…
But maybe you could do something in the bottom…
Pick up your scratching knife and even if it hurts your heart (it hurt mine) begin inserting it between the case and the white plastic area, and use it then for kindly inviting the plastic area to go out by levering it. This is what I mean:
(Note: I don't know where do those crazy distortions at the end of the video come from but they are amazing! I have never programmed an effect like that. I might copy it…)
It took me a bit of trying but if you place the knife in the right spots it will go out in just a minute. I guess if I did it everyday it could be out in 30 seconds. And that's the most difficult part of this process :-)
So here it is:
Unlike normal computers, here it's very difficult to spot components at first sight. Everything is so tightly packed that I didn't touch anything until I examined it carefully. And while you're on it, touch the metallic inside of the case so that you discharge all possible static electricity you could be carrying around. I have never heard of anything broken because of this but I do it just in case.
Unscrewing the right screws
Here's where most of the tutorials fail. I was looking at three different tutorials in my powerbook but at the end I was so confused as to which screws did they refer to that I just decided to ignore them and began unscrewing things until I could reach the hard disk. It is underneath the dvd drive, and it is enclosed in that black chassis you can see. So we need to be able to loose the black chassis and then we'll be able to access the hard disk from the bottom.
There are four screws we need to remove. There's one on each corner of the base, roughly saying (see pic). They are black and the one on front right is bigger:
Screw 1 is easy to get out.
Screw 2 was a little bit stuck on my case. I had to unscrew it very slowly or the screwdriver began to slip and didn't do any useful movement. It can be possible that the antenna (the Bluetooth one) is a little bit closer than it should be, but as it has a spring it is somehow flexible so don't worry too much if you touch it while unscrewing that one.
Screw 3 is easy as well, although quite deep (it's also the largest one).
Screw 4 is relatively tricky. It is underneath that antenna (which is the Airport antenna, by the way) and it seems to be impossible to unscrew it without breaking the antenna! But the antenna can be removed by pressing the two tabs below it at the same time and it will pop out and leave way for you to unscrew the last one:
Battery wire
You need to disconnect a little jumper next to the battery before continuing. It is on the front side, right to the big button battery. If your thumb's fingernail is long enough you can use it for quickly and harmlessly disconnecting that little jumper. Just pull up with the nail and it will disconnect, without having to grab it from the wires:
Inside the mini (at last!)
Once you've completed those steps it's a question of pulling apart the chassis from the base and carefully turn it so that you can see the inside. Be careful with the antenna you removed from its base while unscrewing the screw below it, it may get in the way (and you don't want to break it!).
Here it is. If you want to upgrade your RAM it is now the right moment. Or the processor. I didn't want to do either so I just went for continuing with the hard disk stuff which is here:
Removing the hard disk
The disk is attached to the chassis with four screws. These are silvered and a little bit fatter than the ones we unscrewed. There are two screws on top of the disk and two more on the chassis side. They are easy to spot - no hidden secrets here.
Once the screws are removed you need to pull backwards the disk to disconnect it from the chassis.
Now put there your new big hard disk. It may take a bit to connect it to the chassis but just be patient and you'll get it. No brute force required…!
Putting things back where they were
Once the new hard disk is in place the rest is way quicker. It just consists in undoing what you did, but just for the sake of completion:
Put the hard disk screws back
Carefully flip the chassis again and make sure the connection to the motherboard is fully done
It just needs a bit of pushing and you'll feel how it's connected. In any case there's not any other way of assembling this together and being able to close the case again, so you'll notice anyway :-)
Put the chassis screws back
Put the Bluetooth antenna back in its tabs
Connect the little battery wire we disconnected before
You could use your fingernail again for pushing it down and making sure it connects.
Testing it before closing the case
What I did for being safe - since it had the case opened and I didn't want to risk electrocution - was to disconnect the power adapter. Then I connected the screen, keyboard, mouse and power wires, the external USB disk with the clone of the old disk, and finally connected the power adapter to the mains again. Without touching any component from inside, I switched the computer on.
Because I had done a full clone of the hard disk, the computer could boot from the USB disk. Once it's booted, everything looks as if it was your normal disk: screen settings, applications, data - only it's not!
We need to restore the data from the external into the internal disk, but the internal is not showing because it hasn't been formatted. So go to the usual Applications - Utilities - Disk Utility and make sure the new internal disk is on the list of devices on left:
See how there's a Samsung disk with no partition (partitions are nested in the devices). I selected the new disk, clicked on the Erase tab and said I wanted a new partition, Macintosh Journaled type. Because it was way bigger than the old Macintosh HD partition, I called it MegaHD.
Then I selected MegaHD in the list of partitions and clicked on the Restore tab, dragged the external disk partition (externito) to the Source field and the MegaHD partition to the Destination field. And clicked Restore!
That will take quite a bit of time since it needs to read everything from the USB disk. You can have a walk or something while it completes. It took almost two hours here.
Once it's done, shut down the computer, disconnect the USB disk and try to boot up as normal (only with the case still open). It is normal for a folder with a question mark to appear the first time, it disappears after it finds the boot volume. Test your system, make sure everything keeps working, etc…
As it worked for me, I shut it down, put the case back and congratulated myself :-)
clonn
20071102
Wow! Qué completo! Dan ganas de tener uno para meterle mano xD
Scott Corniuk
20071104
Nice info. Your movies would not play for me.
Scott
sole
20071104
Hi! Glad you like it!
As for the videos, you need flash for watching them. Or it might have been Google video's fault… in any case they aren't hosted here so I can't tell you anything else without more details…
Zeth
20071107
Wow, that is a very useful blog post presented perfectly.
The Mac Mini's antennas seem poorly designed. One should be able to get to the hard drive without having to move them around. Perhaps they were an afterthought.
I would personally consider an anti-static wrist-strap but otherwise you were extremely surgical, earthing yourself against the case of an earthed and plugged in electrical device should have done the job, as long you don't touch your hair too much (I'm not sure the Mac Mini is earthed though, don't they have laptop style adapters?).
The time I saw someone remove the top from his (PowerPC) Mac Mini he just stabbed the putty knife in and yanked it out with one action. You very carefully pulled, almost caressed, it out with your putty knife. Good job.
BTW, the Stanley yellow and black tools are even more fashionable than Apple hardware!
sole
20071107
Hey!
About the antennas… honestly it's the first time I see one of them… I actually thought they looked more like radio antennas. I think they are that way because there's not more space in there.
I can't think of any way of squeezing something larger in the case, and it probably has something to do with the quality of reception. Don't know if it's only psychological but an old PCMCIA wireless card that I used some years ago (with a PC) was able to reach networks further away than my powerbook could. I have the feeling the minis work even worse in that sense, but in my environment that's relatively not a very serious problem.
That guy removing the case with just one action is ace! It took me like 2 minutes of manipulation and kind of 'loosening' the structure before I could actually do anything really effective. I also left some little scratches here and there but nothing harmful.
The Stanley tool is ace! I was so tempted of buying more stuff in the shop but I couldn't find a use for it (yet). The colours remind me to bees somehow.
Werner
20071111
Actually the putty knife action seemed somehwat dangerous to me, I opened it by putting a putty knife left and right and giving both a gentle push at the same time, if done correctly the internals of the mini should pop out.
The only putty knife method seems somewhat dangerous to me, the risk of breaking the plastics which hold everything together seem to be way higher than with the two putty knifes method.
Jeff Rodman
20071115
An excellent presentation! One suggestion: prepare the new drive first, by cloning the internal HDD onto the new drive before starting the disassembly. This can be done using SuperDuper or similar - it's a clone, not a backup, and results in a bootable drive (you can restart the computer and boot off the external drive to be sure it went OK, again before taking anything apart). I got a 2.5" SATA - to - USB2 adapter from OWC (macsales.com) which allows you full access to the new drive. This way, once the new drive is installed, it's all ready to go with no extra data steps.
Thanks for such a nice job!
sole
20071115
Jeff, that's exactly what I said in 'Before opening the case'. You just began with the pictures and ignored everything before them!!
Charles Ying
20071119
Fantastic and very timely. I just bought 2 new MacMini (el cheapo) but need to upgrade to 2GB ram and 250GB SATA drive. Even though I had upgraded many MacMini G4s and older CoreDual Intel Mac Mini's, this new model had me stumped. I almost broke the spring-loaded antenna and decided to google one more time. That was when I came across your superbly done tutorial. The inclusion of the short video clips shows your attention to detail and how much you care for your fellow Mac enthusiasts. It is precisely people like you that make me proud to be part of the Mac community. Thank you for all those who will come behind me. Apple had to do what they do to make the form factor work. Your tutorial helps users to expand the MacMini to its full potential. There is no comparison to even Apple's maintenance manual. All Apple techs should be required to study your tutorial.
With great awe and greater gratitude,
Charles Ying from Kailua Hawaii
P.S. My fingernails did not do the trick. A pair of needlenose pliers work great. I also used the needlenose pliers to help me when repositioning the 4 screws. Also, to line up the SATA connectors, it helps to swing the drive part of the chassis so the SATA drive is vertical to align the SATA connectors to their sockets.
Charles Ying
20071119
Another comment:
Besides making sure to Partition with GUID to enable booting on Intel Mac's, people using Leopard today should switch from SuperDuper! 2.1.4 to the free Carbon Copy Cloner (download the latest)
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
SuperDuper goes through the motions but the resulting clone will not boot up Leopard. CCC which has not worked in Tiger, skips a generation and leapfrogged SuperDuper to regain the title of best OS X Cloning software. You can choose which folders to NOT restore. Which is a nice touch.
Charles
Lucio
20071201
Ola, Soledad
I installed Leopard on my Intel Mini and didn't turn off FileVault before installation.
I am locked out of my computer, and after trying to reboot in Target mode, or holding
down "C" or even Command-S with no success, I finally decided to remove the HD
and install a 100GB 7200rpm Hitachi. Much to my surprise, the computer still doesn't
boot; all I get is the folder with the question mark!
I am a complete rookie when it comes to software, so if anybody has an idea, I would
greatly appreciate hearing it.
thanks for the tutorial
Lucio
sole
20071201
What about booting with the installation DVD and formatting the new hard disk?
Lucio
20071201
Soledad
The computer is totally unresponsive. I had the dvd in the drive and it did not boot or eject.
I started it holding C, holding Option, tried to start it in Target mode and nothing worked.
I remove the PRAM battery to try and get everything to reset, but still nothing! :-(
I took the Mini apart once more and will try and get a friend with an Intel Mac to load the system
to my Hitachi HD and then install it again on the Mini.
I managed to put the Mini's original drive in an enclosure and retrieved pretty much
everything I wanted, so at least I got my applications back and a lot of pics that I had
not backed up to an external HD.
gracias
Lucio
sole
20071201
That's quite odd! But it may happen, yes, because when I did this I was using Tiger, not Leopard yet.
Well, good luck with it! I hope you can sort it out :-)
Jonathan
20071224
Thanks for the excellent tutorial. I haven't done it yet, but will refer to this when I do. Very well done, descriptive, and easy to follow.
Thanks again!
Ovidiu
20071227
Hi,
I want to upgrade my mini to 2G of RAM and i don't know what kind of RAM i need.. can you help me?
Thanks a lot.
sole
20071228
I am not sure about the type of ram your mini has, but you could go to the 'About this mac' option and find out the specs of your mini's ram modules. Alternatively Crucial has some kind of guide which helps you determine which ram modules can be installed in your computer, I used that when upgrading my powerbook and worked perfectly.
Not a tech Anne
20080107
Most excellent! Thank you for a complete post with great photos.
If putting a new / larger hard drive into the mini, any reason why one wouldn't just install the OS from disk? (Leopard 10.5 in my instance).
Thanks for any clarification.
sole
20080107
Well, I didn't install it from the DVD because I wanted to import all my data and installed applications.
If it had been an installation from scratch I would have just gone for the DVD install, of course!
Dan Saban
20080117
Thanks. Nice pictures and recommendations. Not all are EXACTLY alike, but this was an excellent resource. It would ahve been nice to know the actual size of the screwdrivers, the picture doesn't help much to slect the proper size.
I had an internal HD that was shwing signs of imminent failure: Long boots, especially after system updates, spinning beach ball almost every click, inability to specific files while copying… etc. I purchased a new external (using 2 250Gb partitions) and a new internal drive (250Gb). Installed a new system (10.4.5 -> 11) on the first partition of the external as well as various troubleshooting & repair utilities. I struggled with the file backup until I got the new CCC - the file selection is a MUST when you are dealing with potentially corrupted files. At certain times I was copying about 1Gb/hr, sometimes MUCH slower.
I am now checking the sectors of the new internal drive before installing the OS and files. I still haven't decided whether I'll copy the back-up partition directly and then archive/install a new OS (still sticking with 10.4) or do an erase & install (and select the option to transfer user files during the install).
Rod
20080119
Great job!!!
Im wondering why you have to make a copy of the hard drive? Cant you just use the reinstall os DVD on the new Hard Drive?
sole
20080119
Because I wanted to keep all my installed programs and data and all that - and because it's good to make a backup first ;-)
You can use the OS DVD of course!
Gelid
20080125
I've installed a new Western Digital Scorpio 250gb in my Mac Mini Intel 1.66. I'm trying to load Leopard on it from the install DVD. Leopard does not see the WD as a destination to install. This is the second WD I've installed, so it is not a defective drive. What do I do? Thanks in advance for your help.
sole
20080125
Have you tried formatting the disk first? I think that you should get an option on the top menu for "Utilities" before selecting the destination drive, from here it can launch the Disk Utility, then you format the new disk and once you finish, the installation program will be able to find the formatted volume.
Hope that helps!
Gelid
20080125
Thanks for your response. When I boot from the Leopard installation DVD, I don't get any menu at all. It just launches into the installation routine and I arrive at the drive destination selection with the new Western Digital not being found. Is there any way to access disk utilities from the Leopard DVD so that I could format the newly installed drive?
sole
20080125
that's odd… have you tried booting up while pressing the 'C' key? (C for cdrom… or dvd… you get what I mean)
I got the disk utilities option when I booted up with the C key held meanwhile. Hope it works!
aurin
20080126
Thanks a lot for this tutorial, i am going to install a wd scorpio 320gb next week, so this is absolutely nessesary, it certainly seems wise to carbon copy the disk first as i also was just going to use the install dvd - but otherwise i noted that is is possible to boot via firewire from another mac or from a usb harddisk and there access disk utilities to format the new drive:)
sole
20080126
Great! - good luck with it, hope everything works smoothly :)
Gelid
20080126
I used the "c" key to boot from the install dvd of leopard, but got no menu or disk utilities option. Even when I boot without the "c" key it defaults to the install dvd , I assume, since no os is on the new internal hard drive. I've given up on the WD Scorpio 250 and have re-installed the original internal hard drive. A Hitachi hard drive is being delivered today. Hopefully it will be seen by the Mini so that it will be able to be formatted. Thanks for the information. Your tutorial is first rate.
sole
20080126
Sorry to read that :-/
If I have to reformat a mac again I'll take a picture of something of the option so that I can guide people to it more easily next time.
Would you please let me know if the Hitachi disk works? Maybe WD disks aren't compatible (although that would be strange). I think the original one was Hitachi so maybe it's a safe bet - I hope it works :)
Good luck again!
Gelid
20080127
I received the Hitachi 160gb and also an usb external enclosure. I used Carbon Copy Clone and transferred the contents of the original internal hard drive to the Hitachi. I didn't try to format the Hitachi by installing it in the Mini and booting from the Leopard install dvd, so I don't know if it would have been recognized or not. After this succeeded I put the Western Digital 250 in the enclosure, where it was recognized via the usb port, and cloned the original hard drive to it as well and then installed it into the Mac Mini and it worked fine. I'm now assuming that an unformatted hard drive will not show up if it is installed in the Mini. The disk utility menu will not show up when booting from the Leopard dvd unless the drive is already formatted. I now have the Hitachi, which can be used for backups. Have you ever seen an unformatted hard drive installed in a Mac recognized by the os install dvd when booted from that dvd? Thanks for you help.
Gelid
20080127
oops, your
sole
20080127
Interesting to read that. The closest thing I did was putting a disk which was a carbon-cloned copy of my intel mini hard disk, into a powerpc mac. It produced a big kernel panic screen when booting up but it did show the Disk Utilities option when booting from the Leopard dvd, so that's how I managed to format it again (I had been messing with ubuntu so it had several partitions and I wanted to restore it to just one Journaled partition).
rrg
20080229
I'm in the middle of this process and I'm panicking a little because the WiFi antenna seems to have become completely separated from the chassis and I'm not sure where to reconnect it. A black insulated wire runs from the antenna board to a now-detached) copper blob. I don't whether this broke off the chassis or just became disconnected.
Can this be reconnected somewhere without soldering, and if so, where should it go?
Thanks.
sole
20080229
I am not sure … in theory you just need to press the tabs and the antenna 'pops out'… I don't know if you did something different.
rrg
20080229
The cable had become disconnected from a small tab next to the Airport card on the motherboard; mine apparently doesn't attach as securely as most.
I've managed to reconnect it (for now) but now I have another problem: the copper-colored ribbon cable ("Foxconn") connecting the bottom to the top has now become disconnected.
My reading suggests that this is an audio cable and that it "should" be straightforward to reattach, but though I can see where it (probably) needs to go, I can't see how it's supposed to be connected.
I don't suppose you ever removed and reattached this cable yourself? At least one other take-apart description suggested disconnecting it routinely, to make it easier to deal with top and bottom, but no one else has provided anything as helpful as your video clips showing how things come apart and go back together.
Thanks.
sole
20080301
Sorry - I hadn't seen your message in the moderation queue! You're right in your supposition, I didn't disconnect that cable. And I hope at this time you managed to connect it again :-)
If it is the usual audio jumper ended cable it shouldn't be complicated to plug in again, although if it was - how come it got disconnected that easily!? You mini seems to be very loose!
Anyway good luck!
rrg
20080304
I did manage to reconnect it after staring for a while at a few online photos, and it's now running fine with the new 320 GB SATA drive.
I wish I had properly backed up the data on the original 120 GB drive that failed, but…that's my own fault.
Thanks for your help.
sole
20080305
It's great to read that! You're welcome, sorry about not being able to help more :)
Melle Slotema
20080313
Wow. Muchas gracias Soledad!
It took me 10 minutes… and the memory was upgraded :P
A fast HDD is on its way… Let's pimp the baby.
Ozgur
20080402
Thanks for the effort. Amazing guide!
The suboptimal way to open a Mac Mini at What’s All This Brouhaha?
20080410
[...] best instructions I found for removing the hard drive are from Soledad Penadés' blog. My Mac Mini only had three screws holding the drive chassis in place, rather than [...]
mark
20080412
Nice guide. Thanks.
I replaced the HDD in my intel mini today with a 320gb drive. Pretty straightforward. For those who want to know, I was able to boot from the DVD, format the new disk and install Leopard from scratch. Easy.
Cubro
20080414
A very useful guide. I upgraded my Intel Mini with a new 200GB 7200rpm HD. Used SuperDuper to clone my existing HD first. It's the best backup program for Mac. Very easy to use.
Thank you!
caznowin
20080516
I've got a problem same as Lucio and Gelid when I put a new Hitachi 250GB SATA into my mac mini it doesn't work for me.
only appear is Question Mark folder,but before that I've choose ERASE in the format time on DVD Leopard installation. Did I wrong?
So how I've to do next? Pls help me.
Anyway thank you for yuur kind and sorry about my english. (I'm Thai guy) :)
Jun
20080517
Million thanks for an excellent guide !!
I installed new WD 5400rpm 320GB drive and new 2GB memory modules in total of 30 min. Without your guide it would had taken days…
Wouter
20080528
Thank you very much for the excellent guide!! I replaced the original 60GB with a WD scorpio 320. What I don't understand is people's problems with backing up their old HD's. If you take out the old HD and leave it as it was, then what is the problem? If you put your old HD in an external case and plug it into your Mac Mini (USB) you can boot from it - so essentially nothing changed; only that your old internal HD is now external, but you still have your programs, data etc like before. So if you have an external case, there is no problem whatsoever; you can transfer your data before or after. (I bought a WD portable and just switched the Mac Mini HD with the WD 320 HD.)
Thanks again Sole!
sole
20080528
Hey it's great to read all those success stories :-)
I must admit I don't know either what's going wrong with most of the people who report errors. It was totally smooth for me; maybe it depends on certain configurations with certain disks and versions of OS X.
Mr Kirk
20080610
HI, thanks for the guide. Managed to replace my hard drive in minutes. I have a problem though. I copied my original 120gb HD to my 250GB HD before removing it via usb. So theoretically all the info is on the 250gb HD. After replacing the HD I rebooted ok. BUT, in system preferences, I can't select it as the startup disk. Any ideas?
Kit Barker
20080612
Great article, the images and videos were extremely useful.
I'm about to upgrade my HDD and was wondering if anyone had noticed any increase in noise levels from non-standard drives? I use my Mac Mini as a home entertainment system and at the moment it's practically silent, which is how I'd like to keep it!
sole
20080612
@Mr Kirk - that's odd! When I booted for the first time it allowed me to choose the startup disk. Maybe having a look at disk utilities or something? (I haven't tried)
@Kit - No problem at all! It's as silent as before. You can't notice when it's on :-)
Kara
20080615
Sole, thank you SO much for this informative guide. I really can't thank you enough. I also had trouble with the wireless antenna cable becoming disconnected, but I just unhooked the antenna (from the tabs) and then plugged the cable to the card, then laid it over the back and let it sit "loose" while I put the rest of the machine together. Then it was easier to maneuver the tiny cable around the fan blower and mount the antenna back on the tabs where it belongs. Now I have a 250GB intel mini! I just KNEW the apple store guy was covering his own butt when he said the drive wasn't user-serviceable… Without this guide I might have never done this, or at least I would have been pretty frustrated in the process!
Erik
20080701
Nice one!
A few months back I did a memory upgrade on the macmini.
Worst moments:
1) The jumper ("pull with your fingernails") is not only a jumper,
but a socket and a connector (jumper) plugged into it.
If you (because of bad light?) think the socket is part of the jumper you
might "lever" the whole socket from the "motherboard".
2) The cables connecting the antennas to the "motherboard" can get disconnected and
you have to surf the web to find pictures showing which cables has to go where.
3) Plugging the big (peripherial) block back into the "motherboard" was difficult, especially
if some cables get in your way ("How did it look before?")