Review on 🔧 OWC Hard Drive Installation Kit for Lower Drive Bay of 2011-2012 Mac Mini by Todd Lowry

This kit is amazing. I bought it here at Revain a few months ago and just started using it as I was scared to make this upgrade after reading about it and seeing how many steps and delicate components it took. The hard drive assembly is almost the last piece left in the mini case before you can remove and upgrade it. I have to say I'm impressed. The kit contains all the necessary parts, including four Mac-specific screwdrivers to remove and replace the necessary parts. What really pleased me was the absolutely excellent manual - it comes with a small colored booklet, pictures and inserts for small parts and a great guide. If you have some computer skills and a bit of patience and follow the literal instructions, you can complete this project perfectly in a couple of hours. Technical writers from other companies could still learn something from OWC. One caveat: all ports here are very small. So if you have poor close-up vision I highly recommend getting a strong magnifying glass so you can see the components clearly and not damage them. I also had a slight deviation from the procedure: I didn't unplug the antenna connector because I was able to pry the antenna plate out of the way far enough while it was still attached to allow for the removal of other components. The small latch on the wireless antenna connector is VERY easy to damage if you misalign it. I've made this mistake on other systems in the past when trying to get it to connect and breaking it. I didn't use the slow original 500GB HGST hard drive, replacing it with a new 1TB Seagate Firecuda and then adding a 500GB WD Black I had lying around as a second drive. I could probably buy an SSD, but it's basically a second desktop for me and a project computer, so I wanted to see how Firecuda worked. Everything was restored from a Time Machine backup and booted up with no issues and all components are working properly. *Update* had issues with Firecuda, extremely slow startup times and freezes on Mac Mini. The black WD drive worked great as a boot drive. I also had the same problem using another 2.5" Fircuda (2TB) as a bootable USB drive with another Mac, so there seems to be a compatibility issue with Mac and this type of drive (I have 3.5" -Fircuda on a Windows computer that works great). I replaced it with a 500GB Toshiba SSHD and everything has been fine for a few days, so there is no problem with the OWC kit. Just go to the top if you're considering buying one of these drives. I am very happy with it.