Mac Mini 2007 - second hard drive

[gfunkmonk]

I have a macmini2,1 and I want to replace the combo drive with another sata disk. I know it's IDE and it will be slow, but I'm never going to use the optical drive.

I cannot for the life of me find an adapter caddy that has the right connector. There is an iFixIt on the topic but if you look, it's a caddy with a SATA connector.

All my searching has only found things like this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/144648009459

Can anyone point me in the correct direction? Thanks.

 

[ivnj]

why not just use an external USB or firewire? Why bother with such an old machine. I don't think sucj an adapter exists. There are ide to sata adapters but those would be too tight.

 

[now i see it]

The 2007 mini isn’t going to run forever. I have one and it went belly up 7 years ago. Unfixable.

 

[ivnj]

The 2007 mini isn’t going to run forever. I have one and it went belly up 7 years ago. Unfixable.

I have a 2009 mini that still runs.

 

[Guenter]

It is possible to replace the wifi Card with a sata III controler Card and connect e sata drives Even in raid configurations. This is the most flexible way to add fast SSDs to this old Mac. I have dritten a Report on xlr8yourmac.com about this.
wifi can be Addition easyly via USB.

 

[SkippyThorson]

For the cost of the adapter, or another drive, you can Ebay a whole new machine for less than the components + your time to make it work. Bonus is, you may also find another one that's already been modified to your liking, and you can just drop it into your current setup and carry on.

Scope out a 2009 (last of the original Mini design) if you're set on the OG Mini. Also consider upgrading to an already-converted 2010 or dual-drive 2011 Mini Server. People loved putting a second drive caddy in place of the optical drive in the 2010's. The 2010 redesign made the Minis much easier to work on, too.

Beyond that, they make plenty of external bays that fit the Mini design. I had one back in the day called the Mini Stack, which looked like a slimmer version of the aluminum chassis, which sat underneath the Mini. It functioned as both an external drive and hub by including way more ports.

FYI: Check out this slick little combo on the Marketplace.