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Show me the reviews!Mac mini using a 3.5" Drive on the Internal IDE
How to: Increase Mac mini Drive Performance
By Arthur WhalemThe Apple Computer Mac mini is a cute little box with a fast processor and a slow performing hard drive. I thought it would be interesting to see how performance might be improved if I installed a 3.5" 7200 RPM hard drive on the ATA100 IDE bus of a Mac mini 1.42GHz. The Mac mini in these tests has 512MB of memory installed and I have removed the internal DVD and 2.5 inch hard drive in order to attach an adapter that allows the Mac mini to accept one or two 3.5 inch IDE hard drive(s) instead.
The IDE Adapter
Adam Eberbach (aeberbach@hotmail.com) produces adapters for $23 that allowed me to convert the Mac mini 2.5" IDE port into a 3.5" IDE port that an IDE cable can attach to. The Mac mini cannot supply power to my 3.5" drives so I will use an external enclosure or an extra power supply. These adapters are sold "as is" and Adam Eberbach, myself and AMUG cannot be responsible for any consequences arising from the sale or use of these adapters. Understand that while the adapter worked for me any modification you make to your own Mac mini as a result of reading this article is your sole responsibility not mine. Neither I nor AMUG get any compensation from the sale of these adapters. I want to make sure you understand that making these alterations can easily result in damage to your Mac mini if not done properly. In that event, I would not expect Apple to honor your warranty either. Now that you know that you are totally on your own if you should try to duplicate this setup and that there are risks, lets dig into the results.
Install
In order to install the 2.5"->3.5" IDE adapter you will need to open the Mac mini with a putty knife, remove the three screws in the drive tray, remove the screws holding in the fan, remove the six screws in the combo drive and the four screws in the 2.5" hard drive. With this done you can remove the combo drive and the hard drive. Put them in anti-static bags to keep them safe. Next, bag and label the screws so you know where they go if you want to restore your Mac mini back to its original condition later. The best video on how to take the Mac mini apart, that I have seen is posted at the OWC Mac mini upgrade web page. Watch the video a few times to get the hang of it. If you can play it on another Macintosh while you work on the Mac mini, it will be helpful.
Next, you will attach an IDE ribbon cable to the adapter with the empty header on the PCB board treated as the top. The key on the 3.5" IDE cable should be on the bottom. On the other side and bottom of the board will now be your 2.5" male connector. I plugged the 2.5" IDE pins into the daughter board connection where the Mac mini hard drive normally goes with the empty header up and toward the empty mini combo drive connector. The Mac mini has an ATA100 bus that the existing DVD and hard drive share. The new 3.5" ribbon cable can support up to two drives. If you are setting up the Mac mini as a server with this adapter you may want to connect two drives in a PC case as Adam Eberbach did in his Mac mini Maxi article posted at: http://www.appletalk.com.au/articles/index.php?article=4433. For my purposes I wanted to be able to use a single large 3.5" drive with the Mac mini and do not actually need two. However, I wanted to copy a bootable backup of my Mac mini to a 160GB hard drive that I formatted using this Mac Mini 3.5" drive setup. I attached two drives
to the Mac mini just for this purpose. A separate power supply was used to power the two drives connected to the Mac mini IDE internal bus over an 18" IDE cable. The top of the Mac mini is removed so that you can see how it was connected. Clicking on the image will display a close up of the Mac mini.The two drives were mounted in drive trays and placed on their sides. The IDE cable attaches to each drive and the Mac mini. When I backed up the data using the 3.5" drives with Retrospect 6, I found that the internal IDE would perform about 20% faster than backing up the same data using the 2.5" internal and a FireWire 400 drive.| Backup 19.2GB | From | To | Average MB/minute | Copy | Compare | Time |
| Mac mini 1.42 512MB | Internal 2.5" | FireWire 400 | 383.8 | 352.3 | 421.5 | 1:42 |
| Mac mini 1.42 512MB | Internal 3.5" | Internal 3.5" | 491.5 | 417.2 | 598 | 1:23 |
Finding an Enclosure
After copying the Mac mini hard drive to a 160GB drive formatted as the new 3.5" internal, I began a search for an inexpensive enclosure to hold my new creation. The first enclosure I tested was an old empty SCSI enclosure I had laying around. I removed the SCSI connectors and inserted the IDE cable into the enclosure and attached it to the drive. The enclosure powered the drive and the internal fan. I placed the Mac mini on top of the enclosure and set the Mac mini top back on it without snapping it into place.
The old SCSI enclosure worked well but the fan was a little too loud for my taste. I wanted the Mac mini to still stay fairly silent while being able to install an inexpensive 3.5" hard drive. The next enclosure I tried was the WiebeTECH TrayDock. The TrayDock works well as the top can easily come off of the enclosure for this install.
I moved the original TrayDock connector back and installed the Mac mini IDE cable instead. Once installed I simply screwed the TrayDock top back on and placed the Mac mini on top of the TrayDock.
I placed a few spacers between the TrayDock and the Mac mini as the bottom of the Mac mini can get hot and the TrayDock has no fan. After a few days the TrayDock seemed to run hotter than I had hoped and I decided I wanted to find an enclosure with a fan that was quiet. I also thought a 5.25" enclosure might be better so that I could use two of them stacked. One 5.25" enclosure would hold a 3.5" drive and the other would hold a Pioneer DVR 109. Since my modification removed the DVD and the internal hard drive I thought it would be nice to have an inexpensive DVR option available too.
In my search to find the perfect enclosure to use with a Mac mini IDE adapter, I found that enclosures with a top that screws off work well. In addition, using a 5.25" enclosure allows you to use a DVD or a hard drive in it and it works well under the Mac mini 6.5" square foot
print. Enclosures that I am considering include the Kingwin 5.25" EIDE CD/DVD USB2.0 / Firewire silver enclosure, Model SS-525UF-S $51. It has a ball bearing cooling fan included to improve device performance and a fan failure alarm system with a red LED indicator. This is a FireWire enclosure so you could use it with the FireWire 400 port too. I also believe the $41 PM-525F2-MOS
5.25" FireWire 400 enclosure may be a good choice. It has an Oxford Semiconductor OXFD911 chipset and a ball bearing rear fan. It will not be totally quiet but the drive will stay cool. Another option for the Mac mini server minded user might be the FireWire 400 enclosure U7-2-WA with two bays for $179. The fan in the unit is not quiet but they are well built and could allow for multiple drives. I would use a 24" ATA 133 IDE cable with the enclosure and mount two drives in it attached to the Mac mini with the IDE adapter. The
enclosure top comes off so that you can easily access the drives with a drop down cable from the Mac mini sitting above. If you don't want the enclosure for anything but the Mac mini you might save $60 by using the SATA version (but then
you could not use it for FW400 drives on the Mac mini). The SATA version of the same enclosure is model U7-2-S1 and is $110 plus shipping. Having FireWire capability might be a nice option for adding even more drives. If you want to add four drives with two on the IDE adapter and two on the Mac mini FW400 port there is also a four drive FW400 version for $299 called the U7-4-WA.Performance
In order to see how the Mac mini 2.5" 80GB drive performance might compare to a Maxtor 160GB placed on the 3.5" IDE adapter, I used Drive Genius to record the performance of each drive.
Sustained Read Test
Green = 80GB 2.5" mini drive. Blue = 160GB Maxtor 3.5" mounted on internal Mac mini IDE.
As you can see in the sustained read test graph above the 160GB 3.5" Maxtor hard drive installed on the Mac mini IDE adapter was 70-100% faster than the original 80GB 2.5" drive that came with the Mac mini.
Sustained Write Test
Green = 80GB 2.5" mini drive. Blue = 160GB Maxtor 3.5" mounted on internal Mac mini IDE.
In the sustained write test above the Maxtor 160GB was about twice as fast as the Apple provided 2.5" drive when used with the Mac mini. In real usage I noticed quicker response time from the Mac mini with the 3.5" drive installed. Everything works a little faster and smoother.
Xbench tests
The Mac mini 1.42GHz with 512MB of memory used in this review provided some interesting results. Xbench gave it an overall score of 117.41 using the standard 80GB 2.5" internal drive. I was able to increase the Xbench overall score to 149.24 using the internal 160GB 3.5" hard drive. That is a substantial increase in performance. In order to see what effect just using the Mac mini FW400 port to boot the same Maxtor 160GB would be, I tested that configuration as well. As you can see, booting from the FW400 port increased the Xbench performance as well.
| Xbench Scores | Mac mini 1.42 stock | Mac mini 1.42 boot from FW400 | Mac mini boot from 160GB 3.5" |
| Overall | 117.41 | 134.57 | 149.24 |
| CPU | 167.71 | 172.07 | 171.61 |
| Memory | 128.86 | 141.33 | 131.81 |
| Quartz | 178.11 | 176.33 | 176.63 |
| Disk Test | 51.30 | 78.53 | 137.74 |
Discussing the Results
The Mac mini normal hard drive configuration will meet the needs of most users. Its performance is similar to that of an iBook or PowerBook. However, if you want performance and drive options that more closely resemble Macintosh desktops, use of the 2.5" ->3.5" IDE adapter discussed in this article can achieve that. You will need to decide if the additional space required for the 3.5" drive is worth the added performance. When a Mac mini is used with a 3.5" 7200 RPM drive the performance increases considerably for disk related tasks. Using a $499 Mac mini with a $51 drive enclosure and a $23 adapter will give you performance results very similar to that of a PowerMac G4 1.25GHz computer. That is a nice value for the minimal upgrade cost. In addition, if you are considering upgrading the Mac mini hard drive or DVD you can do so for much less expense using standard 5.25" DVD burners and 3.5" hard drives. In fact, you may already own them. Using a Mac mini with a fast 3.5" drive will speed up audio, video and other disk related operations.
mini Server
While the Mac mini works very well as a home server the internal disk size limitations will require those wanting a larger drive to use an external FireWire enclosure anyway. In this situation why not consider the faster alternative of using the 2.5"-> 3.5" IDE adapter? You can use a simple enclosure as I have done or you could mount the Mac mini in a PC case as Adam Eberbach did in his Mac mini Maxi article. The point of this article is to demonstrate that it is possible to adapt the Mac mini to accept standard 3.5" desktop drives. A home server will run faster with a 3.5" drive(s) on the Mac mini IDE bus than in any other configuration I have tried.
Mac mini Design
While the Mac mini uses portable computer components like the 2.5" hard drive and the slim CD/DVD combo drive, it's design is much easier to work on than the iBook or Powerbook. Most users will never want to take an iBook apart and try to keep track of the 80 plus screws and where they go. The Mac mini is actually much better. Opening the Mac mini with a putty knife gets easier each time and the DVD, hard drive and fan are all easily removed and replaced with a phillips #0 and #1 screwdriver. I find the Mac mini a littler harder to work on than a PowerMac but so much easier than an iBook. If you decide to try the 2.5" -> 3.5" IDE adapter you will learn more about how your Mac mini is put together and find that it really is not very complicated to work on.
Pros
Adapter costs $23.
Supports any IDE hard drive.
Supports drives over 128GB.
Increases Mac mini performance.
Mac mini runs cooler without the drive in the case.
Mac mini fan turns on less often.
Adapter could be used with other portable 2.5" drive connectors.
Works with Cable Select or Master-Slave settings.
Cons
Requires the use of an external enclosure.
May void your Mac mini warranty.
Requires you to remove existing hard drive.
No instructions provided with adapter.
2.5"->3.5" IDE Adapter gets 4 AMUGs out of 5!
The Mac mini has a great processor. The 2.5"->3.5" IDE adapter allows you to increase the performance of your Mac mini and use standard inexpensive desktop IDE drives with it. Using this adapter requires some care not to damage your Mac mini but once installed it really works well. If you are interested in obtaining a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapter contact Adam Eberbach at aeberbach@hotmail.com. The adapter is $18 + $5 shipping (outside Australia) or $3 shipping (inside Australia). Use the subject line "IDE ADAPTER" when emailing him so that he can separate your queries from spam. If you are interested in reading other articles that discuss the IDE adapter see:
1. Mac mini Centris Drive Dock
2. Purple mini
3. Mac mini Maxi
Copyright 2005
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG)
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