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Iceland, ReykjavΓ­k
1 Level
652 Review
50 Karma

Review on πŸ”§ OWC Hard Drive Installation Kit for Lower Drive Bay of 2011-2012 Mac Mini by Jason Morrison

Revainrating 4 out of 5

worked for me but not easy and not fast.

I bought a cheaper upgrade kit that came with the top and bottom drive bay cables, but didn't want to upgrade until I tried installing macOS Mojave on mini. He told me that the current drive has a SMART problem and I should backup and replace the current drive. So that's what prompted me to upgrade. I couldn't find the cheap kit I got so I ordered it direct from OWC. I also ordered a 480GB Crucial BX500 hard drive and a 1TB 7200rpm WD Black hard drive. The OWC video was excellent for the most part. However, they made it easy to connect the antenna and after doing this many times I finally got it pretty good. I think it took me an hour to line it up and put it back in the first time. I didn't use the copper shield that was supposed to enhance the car because I realized it was late in the assembly process. To what didn't work for me. The piece of metal holding the antenna is preventing me from aligning both of the screws holding it in place. So I only installed one. These raised screws, along with the third screw, secure the bottom cover. So my bottom cover only holds up with two of these. I messed up installing macOS because I removed the original hard drive and installed new ones. So if I didn't take them apart again, I wouldn't have a separate 480GB SSD and 1TB HDD. So I left the default Fusion drive, which turned out to be around 1.4TB. I used internet recovery which installed an older version of OSX (probably Mountain Lion) and upgraded to Mojave. So it worked fine and I was able to migrate from the original drive connected through the USB enclosure. There may be other issues that I haven't found yet, but the machine works and I'm running Mojave with my apps and data restored to the new Fusion drive.

Pros
  • nice thing
Cons
  • annoying