The good news: with a decent speed hard drive and 4GB memory (the maximum on early 2009 Mac minis), this little box is great! UI response is crisp, and the system boots as quick as could be asked.

The bad news: as various online reviews mentioned, this is one of the harder upgrades to perform. Actually installing the RAM and hard drive is straightforward as on other systems, but getting there is a beast! I also consider the base mini barely usable except for the basic tasks. The system’s paltry 1GB is taxed after loading two or three applications. Definitely upgrade the RAM to 4GB (a $64 upgrade direct from Crucial, see the links below).

There’s many sites documenting Mac mini disassembly so I won’t go into great detail here.

Cracking the case required modifying a putty knife, to give it a beveled edge to wedge between the aluminum case and the plastic fingers holding it to the bottom. Remove the three antennas from their stands. Next was finding four black screws hidden in black recesses at each corner. After disconnecting a ribbon cable, the black plastic top holding the DVD drive and hard drive can be separated from the motherboard.

With the drives out of the way, replacing the RAM was easy, it’s in the left-front corner on the motherboard. One poster on the Apple discussion site had difficulty installing the upper DIMM, but I found sliding it between the upper and lower retaining clips the easiest method.

Getting to the hard drive was straightforward but required removing the DVD. The screws on the drive’s right side are a little tricky to put back due to the recesses, unless you have a magnetic-tip screwdriver or are careful manipulating the screws.

Here are some things I noticed on other sites mentioned in passing:

• Before taking the black plastic top piece, be sure to remove the connector on the attached circuit board. It controls the speaker (I left it unplugged on my first reassembly) for sure, and possibly other stuff (does anyone know?).
• When replacing the hard drive, transfer the two cushions from the old drive. They act as shock absorbers to cushion drive from the motherboard components.
• The Mac mini will sound terrible when removing and installing the aluminum outer case. As others have said, it sounds worse than it really is.

One of my cats was thrilled for me to do this. Ok, she was more “meh” and took a nap instead.

Resources:

• Macworld Mac mini upgrade recommendations: http://www.macworld.com/article/140575/macmini2009upgrade.html
• iFixit  Mac mini teardown: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac-mini-A1283/659/1
• Unboxing and teardown @ macminicolo: http://www.macminicolo.net/macmini2009.html
• iFixit 1TB Mac mini (2x 500GB drives): http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Mac-mini-A1283-Terabyte-Drive/660/1
• Memory upgrades at Crucial: http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Mac%20mini%20(Intel%20Core%202%20Duo%202.0GHz%20DDR3)%20MB463LL/A&pl=Apple&cat=RAM
• Memory upgrades at Crucial, main Mac page: http://www.crucial.com/mac/index.aspx

The past year or so, I’ve not used BootCamp because I did not know how to transfer the BootCamp partition to my new hard drive load. By default, OS X can read from, but not write to, NTFS partitions.

Enter Winclone, a free utility to backup and restore BootCamp partitions. It creates a backup image of your partition, which you can copy to other Macs and restore. (Kids, stay legal!) I whipped out my original MBP hard drive, hooked it to my trusty SATA dock, and ripped the BootCamp image. Because Windows was not installed in BootCamp, my image file was 1.4MB; that’s right, it could fit on a floppy disk!

Flush with excitement, I created a fresh BootCamp parition on my new hard drive and restored it with Winclone. Hooked up the external drive, reboot, select “Windows” from the boot screen. Fail! The USB drive flashed and posted this error message:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.

To understand how Windows finds the XP install, the boot loader looks in file boot.ini on the boot drive. (The boot drive and the system drive / partition can be different.) This error indicates it could found and read boot.ini, but could not find the Windows install. Fortunately, boot.ini is on the internal BootCamp parition and reviewing it showed:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

The interesting bits are on lines 3 and 5; specifically, partition(3). I theorized that perhaps partition 3 was not valid in my new install, that it should be partition 1 instead. So I downloaded NTFS-3G for OS X (see below for the link), and edited boot.ini, changing the two lines from partition(3) to partition (1):

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Et voilà, the next reboot was a success!

Resources:

• Making a custom XP install disc with USB support: http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8
• Winclone home page: http://twocanoes.com/winclone/
• NTFS-3G for OS X: http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

The RAM modules do not need to be removed from the laptop to disassemble it. However, I’m a masochist and removed them anyway; it’s one less thing to damage if the screwdriver slips.

Instead of restoring from Time Machine, I performed a “Restore” using Disk Utility. I restored the internal drive to the new drive (using a SATA docking station), then swapped the drives.

After the swap, the system started slower than normal. The boot screen briefly showed a folder with a question mark before the Apple logo and startup bong. A quick search revealed I had to set the startup drive in System Preferences: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1440. Once done the system boots quickly. I assume that restoring from the install disc and Time Machine correctly set the startup drive preference.

Using the Disk Uility restore method, the destination drive showed more free space than the source by a few GB. I believe this is because the Spotlight cache is not restored to the destination drive. Immediately on logging in, Spotlight started indexing the new drive. After indexing, the free space was in the ballpark of the original drive.

Here is a picture of all the screws removed (click on it to see full size). My preferred disassembly order (top to bottom) is:

• RAM cover screws (4)
• RAM cover removed
• Screws under RAM cover (2)
• RAM modules removed
• Left: Side and back screws (13), Right: hinge screws (4)
• Hard drive hold down and screws (2)
• Left: bare hard drive screws (2), Center: new hard drive, Right: hard drive screws with bushings (2)

The ifixit site has a step-by-step guide for disassembling the MBP: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/MacBook-Pro-17-Inch-Core-Duo-Hard-Drive-Replacement/319/1

Flash forward to last Wenesday. I found the poor Dynex eSata card under a pile of papers on my desk, and wondered if anything changed in the past year. I researched some links I used previously (namely, the Leopard and Silicon Image 3132 discussion, see below) and found some new ones. I took several steps in tandem (the shotgun approach) but now the drive appears to work correctly with eSATA. I’ve had no issues with Time Machine, or the drive freezing or disconnecting. The issue is resolved!

What did I do?

1. I installed the latest Silicon Image 3132 drivers for OS X Leopard: SATARAID5, version 1.5.16.0. By itself, it did not fix the problem. It appears Silicon Image focused on providing the SATARAID drivers, as most people in the discussions have had the best luck with it, and there is no harm in using the drivers with non-RAID cards. (Although, most two-port eSATA cards support software RAID). Link to Silicon Image drivers for OS X Leopard: http://siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=3&os=3
2. I turned off OS X’s hard drive sleep mode. There are two places to turn it off. The first is in System Preferences, Energy Saver, Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible. (You may need to click the Show Details button to see this option.) The second is a developer tool, found in /Developer/Applications/Performance Tools/CHUD/Hardware Tools/SpindownHD. It allows for global enabling and disabling of hard drive sleep modes. The web page where I found this hint suggested that OS X only sends those commands to drives connected via FireWire or USB. Link to MacNoob page: http://www.macnoob.net/blog/2008/05/the-sleepy-western-digital-mybook-saga/
3. Finally, I upgraded the firmware on the Western Digital MyBook Studio. The web page had a lot of perquisites, including uninstalling the Western Digital Drive Manager (which I use to manage the RAID on the MyBook Pro drive), temporarily disabling Time Machine, and connecting the drive via USB. (The firmware update only works via USB.) Once the prereq’s were done, the update itself went smoothly. Link to Western Digital firmware update: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=113&sid=60&lang=en
4. There is no step four! I powered down the drive and connected it via eSATA, and everything has worked like kittens. I’m on day three and have run the gamut of sleep mode, inactivity, Time Machine, on-demand access, and everything has just worked!

Now that my eSATA issues are sorted out, I’m thinking about moving to a Mac Mini… but that’s another story for later.

Resources:

• OS X Leopard and Silicon Image 3132 discussion: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=378576
• Silicon Image drivers for OS X Leopard: http://siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=3&os=3
• eSATA on MacNoob blog: http://www.macnoob.net/blog/2008/05/the-sleepy-western-digital-mybook-saga/
• Western Digital firmware update: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=113&sid=60&lang=en
• Removing the Western Digital Button Manager/Drive Manager: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=392081
• Another link on removing the Button Manager: http://www.theosquest.com/2007/07/16/wd-my-book-button-manager-removed-and-some-frustrations/
• I found Drive Manager on my Mac in /Library/Application Support/WesternDigital/WDDriveManager. Drag to the desktop to uninstall (may require your administrative password).