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Mac mini Maximized With 3.5" Drives
Demolition writes "You just knew that someone would get around to this, didn't you?
In this how-to article from AppleTalk Australia, a step-by-step guide describes how to transplant a Mac mini into a micro-ATX case and a method to connect standard 3.5" hard drives to it (using do-it-yourself 2.5"-to-3.5" IDE adapters). Only some minor case modifications and some added cooling are needed to complete the project."
coral cache
Small form factor is nice, but if you want to throw it in your basement as a server, it's main benefits are:
1) It's cheap
2) Draws about 65 watts, so your electric bill will be lower than using an old G3 tower or something
So, in that case, if you want to use it as a server, a nice 400 GB 3.5" IDE drive would be great. Who cares about the case if it's in your basement.
Now, if they can only figure out how to get Gigabit Ethernet in there...
Mac mini Maxi
By: aeberbach
Feb 8 2005
The Mac mini Maxi - how I attached extra storage to make a mini server.
This article involves doing things to your Mac mini which may well destroy it. You should not try this unless you are prepared to lose your entire Mac mini investment, and you should definitely not try it if you do not have an appreciation for the dangers of power tools, electricity and the jagged edges found inside PC cases!
When I woke up in Australia the morning after the MWSF keynote speech had come and gone, the Apple store timed out for 30 minutes or so before I was able to get my order in. It was a long wait until the 28th when the mini finally shipped, then the 31st before it was delivered. I wasted no time in getting the cover off and upgrading the memory, and was immediately impressed by this little machine.
However 2.5" notebook hard drives are a serious limitation. For one they are limited to 100GB - I have more than that just in FLAC-encoded CDs, and I have half that much just in RAW-format images. The mini would make a great little server - quiet, cheap to buy new, low power too - if only big drives could be attached. Knowing that the mini uses 2.5" IDE drives I decided it was just a matter of making the physical connector right, and started this project about a week before I actually got the mini, luckily I guessed right. The speed increase that comes with using 7200 rpm drives is not to be sneezed at either (the largest 2.5" 7200 rpm drive I know of is just 60GB).
There have been more than enough photo essays about unpacking the mini and disassembling it in various levels of detail. I'm going to jump right in and show you the part that mattered to me, the daughter board that connects the optical and hard drives to the mainboard. You won't see this view of it unless you disconnect both drives.
On the top is the optical drive connector. This is a standard connector but it's surface mount and difficult to buy - not something you can easily solder up at home. Below that is a 2mm-pitch 44-way connector, mating with a standard 2.5" drive - aha! Since I had adapters that let me use these drives in a desktop PC, I figured the reverse would be possible. And also I guessed that the optical and hard drives are simply master and slave devices on the IDE bus. A simple adapter would let me connect two normal IDE drives, be they optical or whatever. But while the adapter to connect 2.5" drives to a desktop machine is easily available, an adapter to connect 3.5" drives to a machine expecting 2.5" drives is not. Obviously 3.5" drives won't physically fit in laptops and there are different power requirements too so I could believe that such a thing wasn't available.
Taking the easily available adapter and just reversing the sexes of the connectors might seem like an easy way to do this but then the positions of the pins are swapped - pin 1 would become pin 2, etc. - a sure way to damage the machine or the drive or both. Each pin must be mapped correctly to the same-numbered pin on the other side of the adapter.
Where to put this server? Clearly 3.5" drives weren't going to fit in the mini's case. I settled on the Aopen H420B micro ATX case. If you're a switcher then Aopen might be a familiar name in cases. This is a fairly typical example of a PC case - steel sides, plastic front, clunky, covered in styling details that don't really help its looks. However it is roomy, comes with a power supply and as PC cases go is fairly compact. Another view shows that it is ready to house two 5.25" devices and a maximum of four 3.5" devices, although if you ask me stacking drives together in such a confined space is asking for heat-related trouble.
That this case is not as stylish as the mini isn't a big deal - its intended use is as a server, and it will be out of sight. I intend using it to store MP3s, images and video, and will stream music to various places around the house. It will share drives and be a convenient first backup location for work
For $150 you can add a 7200RPM 2.5" Hitachi TravelStar drive. Surprisingly, these drives run cooler than many 5400RPM 2.5" drives while providing the performance of a typical 7200RPM desktop drive. Best of all, you won't have to hack up your Mini (thereby violating the warranty) to install it.
1 word: Firewire... jeez.
The S-Video is in the $19 cable that you plug in to the DVI port.A ppleStore?productLearnMore=M9267G/A
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/
Perhaps some vendor like El Gato will even make a FireWire PVR/tuner solution WITH an integrated 3.5" drive bay, in the same type of case as Mac mini.
Actually, there are already some very good articles up on how to make your Mac mini into an HDTV PVR. Basically, you need an HDTV tuner with a firewire output. This can be had for about $5 a month from your cable company, or you can buy one for OTA (over the air) HDTV broadcasts here.
The only thing that prevents the Mac mini from direct HDTV playback is that the processor speed is too slow (requires a G5 for that). If you want to add the final missing piece to your Mac mini enabled HDTV PVR setup, simply add a Roku Photobridge HD digital media player and you are in business.
I should note that the Mac mini can playback SD programming with no problem; it's only the HD programming that requires a little extra oomph... The cool thing about this is that currently, no Windows PC can touch the direct firewire recording capabilities of the Mac. DVHStool was originally written as a proof of concept to show how easy it was to manipulate digital video with the Mac, but it also shows how far behind Windows has become on Firewire. Let's not forget people, Apple invented IEEE1394, or Firewire, as it is more commonly known.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Download the free FireWire SDK from Apple, and you get a virtual DVHS application that makes your Mac's 1394 interface look like a digital VHS. Combine this with a HD tuner that has FireWire out, like the Motorola 6200 series used by Comcast and others, or the Samsung T165 ATSC tuner, and you're most of the way to a PVR.
Lack of a second hard drive? Hardly. I bet you could connect a few hundred hard drives to an iMac or a Mini. (And don't try to tell me 127 is the limit, 'cause that's USB, and we all know USB is crap.)
On my mini 1.42, I bench about 50% faster with a 7200 rpm 8mb 250 gig Firewire over the stock 4200 rpm 80 gig 2.5". The speedup is very obvious in use. Oh, and I boot from it.
What is this latency of which you speak?
--- Submission is feudal.
You missed the details.
He didn't modify the Mini case at all, so that he can completely undo the setup and still have a pristine Mini.
In addition, he didn't want to burden the Mini power supply to power two 3.5" 7200 RPM drives.
And of course, he wanted a Mac, not a PC box.
What is this latency of which you speak?
All benchmarks I've read show that firewire has much worse latency than IDE. A quick google revealed that average IO response time is 17.8ms for firewire and 0.12ms for IDE for a particular Maxtor drie (note: the 0.12ms figure is almost certainly because they were hitting data in the hd cache; otherwise it should have been more like 5 ms for the ide case). I am guessing that if you are streaming data, firewire is not too bad, but random access on a firewire drive will not give you good performance.
I recommend you to run a benchmark after connecting your drive directly to your machine's IDE cable.
If you'd booted from a 3.5" 7200rpm drive on the IDE bus you'd know exactly where the latency is. You're getting confused by the fact that firewire is beating something that is extremely slow. That firewire would be beaten in turn hasn't crossed your mind? Or does your firewire drive make your mac as fast as it could possibly be?
On the contrary, the closest equivalent I could find was a Cappuchino PC. And by the time you's upped it's processor MHz, disk memory GB to iMac mini spec, the cost was $909. You won't find any PC of comparable spec to the mini for lower cost than the mini. Either you'll compromise on the size, or you'll have to build it yourself.
He's not confused, it's his point. Internal drive, 4200 RPM == slow and sucky. External Firewire drive, 7200 RPM == spins fast enough to make up for the connection latency. Therefore, an external 7200 RPM firewire drive is faster than a 4200 IDE. I'll confirm the boot up speed difference. My iBook boots much faster from my LaCie FW drive than from its internal drive. Random access and normal usage though? I can't make any claims in that regard.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...