Is it possible to upgrade the hard drive in the 2018 Mac Mini?
AS the title suggests. I’ve seen guides for the memory, but nothing about the hard drive. Their 1tb drive is $400, and 2tb is $800.
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Nope, it's not possible. The flash storage chips are soldered to the logic board. You're stuck with what you get.
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I guess a thunderbolt drive is in order then. Their SSD upgrade prices are insulting.
@jtsternberg People who love their PCs do argue a good point that you could get a fully spec'd out version of a gaming PC for much less then a Mac. I agree with them on that one. It's becoming hard to stay loyal to the current version of Apple. :-/
Unfortunately I am a web developer, and while things are becoming more windows-friendly, Macs are still the primary environment used, and tooling is geared for it. I think I'll be with apple for a bit longer.
@jtsternberg Well, bummer! Have you ever heard of a Hackintosh?
I have! It's intriguing, but one of the reasons I got into apple was because I didn't WANT to hack on my rig :D
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The Samsung X5 SSD’s connected via TB3 are very fast. They’re NVMe drives…When I got the Mac Mini with an internal 256GB SSD, I knew that I’d be adding an external drive. Very happy to have found these Samsung drives, runs at the speed of an internal drive.
Where Apple really got me, though, was that I selected 8GB of memory, intending to upgrade the memory myself if I needed it. I had read that memory was user upgradeable. Well, when I saw what would be needed to do the upgrade myself, taking just about everything out of the case, I decided to have Apple do it. The labor costs were fine, but they really rip you off on the cost of the memory chips. I should have asked if they would do the upgrade using memory chips that I supplied, but decided not to go that route. I doubt that they would gone along with that, and missed out on the very high margin on the cost of the memory chips. Anyways, it cost about twice what it would have cost to get the memory at the time I configured the system on the Apple web site. A lesson learned :-).
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Good point I enjoy the Samsung T5 in 2 Tb format. Not cheap but they’re quick. Waiting to see what happens with my job as the company is up for recontract. If we win the next contract then I’ll buy a new mini. My 2012 version is still doing what I need but I do miss the IWatch logon like it does with my 2015 MBP. I hear you on taking a new mini apart to install bigger ram. No issue on doing it to a used mini but voiding a new machine warranty leaves me cold even with my A+ cert. I might ask Apple before I purchase if that’s even an option. Sir, are you an Apple employee or licensed repair shop? Ummm, no. There’s your sign. Retired avionics tech, I love repairing stuff.
Re Apple's decline: I remember 2-3 years ago my Windows machine constantly failing to install "critical updates" over and over again. I also remember having to reinstall the operating system because Restore Points magically got erased while trying to recover. And further remember what a colossal pain it is to implement any sort of sane backup of OS. And then there's Windows constantly asking for more and more of my personal data to improve "user experience". And to borrow my computers system resources to help update other computers. Not to mention using Windows for enterprise work: they add all that security and suddenly your computer fights you every step of the way.
For sure, Windows 10 is nice... My favorite windows yet. But I never miss it when it's gone.
Re tooling: somehow there is the perfect version of everything in the Mac store. On windows, there is a little something of everything, with most of it sucking.
All of which is to say, when you buy Apple you are not just laying for a machine.
I upgraded my memory from 8 to 64 by myself in about 25 minutes. In the future just go online watch the video it really is simple.
Piece of cake to upgrade. I took mine out of the box took it apart installed 64 gb OWC Ram in about 25 minutes. Fired it up for the first time, flawless.
While I agree with a lot of the grumbling about Apple, I disagree about the memory. It's harder than opening a typical PC case for sure, but it's not *that* hard, provided you have the right screw drivers. I did myself a favor a few years ago and bought a screw driver set with a super comprehensive set of heads for about $20.) In fact, I would say it's easier than the iMac.
So How do I remove the soldered SSD and replace it with another? It does seem worth the effort.
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Not worth it to me. Jeopardize warranty and Apple quality. It’s more expensive to order with 32gb ram and 1TB but then I’d rather just keep it as ordered and then resale could be better than modding it after the purchase. Other computers I wouldn’t have an issue doing that to or building a pc/Hackintosh but for some reason I just want to keep this next mini in virgin condition. Just me I guess.
This is not even an option! A very different design than a SSD.
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Can anyone who understand the Mac Mini logic board explain what to unsolder and to re-solder a PCIe NVME card to upgrade with a NVME SSD?
I know this one is possible.
Choose any best PCIe NVME Card. The best reliable and fastest transfer rate.
This is the only solution for the Drive upgrade in that Mac Mini 2018. Or, any other unsoldering & soldering method that will work perfectly.
Thanks
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@dj_sash - Not an option the design is very different!
The T2 design does not offer a PCIe interface the storage are discreet flash chips not a SSD assembly like you are thinking of.
should of brought an older Mac I upgraded mine with 16gb of ram and 2 new ssd one ssd with 1tb running the latest Mac OS and a second ssd with 240gb running windows 10
older the better
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The inability to increase hard drive space would not be a problem for me if Apple didn't require bundled applications I never use… e.g. Chess, et.al.
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Just delete them if they bother you, none of the supplied Apps are required!
I would hang onto a few like Safari, Mail, Messages and the Utility folder apps.
Simply trash apps you don’t use!
