Slashdot Mirror


FireWire for 75% Better Mac mini Disk Performance

peterdaly writes "As a proud new owner of a Mac mini, I quickly discovered the internal hard drive performance was so pathetic compared to what I was used to that I needed to do something about it ... preferably on the cheap. I ended up trying a FireWire attached storage enclosure and using an older 80GB drive I had in my closet from a dead PC. My mini got about a 75 percent disk performance increase for about $50 (or $100 if you need a drive). Here is a benchmark of before and after as well as information about my research and upgrade. If you already have at least 512MB RAM, this may be the best performance bang for your buck if you're looking for your mini to be faster and more responsive."

4 of 533 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And if you want something really cool by value_added · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... relatively poor ... way more huge ... way too ugly"

    A thoughtful analysis if ever I read one.

  2. This just in.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This just in..
    Mac user upgrades slow standard hard drive to a faster one and then gets better performance. A PC user was overheard saying "no shit".

  3. Re:And if you want something really cool by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can you buy two of those and run them in RAID-1?

    1 macMini: $500
    2 400GB external drives: $1000
    Spending $1500 to run RAID on an entry-level machine: priceless.
    --
    "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  4. My similar story was rejected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I upgraded my GF4 MX400 to a 9800XT and got 200% performance increase. I submitted the story and my links which had benchmarks to show the increase, my story was rejected. I guess upgrading a slow part to a faster part in the Mini seems so much more sexy then upgrading a PC.

    Funniest part of the the article, dude pulled out something he had pitched in his closet and it is faster then the drive in his brand new machine. Half the Mac diehards rate that as insightful, the other half make excuses and try to justify why the standard Mini drive is so slow.