Different materials, upgrades in mechanisms and capabilities, much better electronics inside, but mechanically similar enough that there’s no mistaking it. The one I disassembled was bigger, slower, noisier, and less reliable than the ones used in computers today, but with the cover off, it looked just the same as a modern one. Hard drives are faster, smaller, and use less energy than ever before, but they’re still essentially unchanged in basic concept from the first refrigerator-sized storage devices that IBM developed for its room-sized computers more than half a century ago.Īlmost 30 years ago I worked for a hard drive company, and one of the first things I did when I started was to take apart a drive to understand how it worked. In the process, Apple sacrifices a lot of performance.Ģ1st-century computing saddled with 20th-century storage
It’s little wonder that Apple continues to use them for low-cost, low-margin systems like the Mac mini. The price of SSDs has dropped precipitously in the past few years, but hard drives remain the champion of low cost per gigabyte – a 500 GB HDD replacement for a Mac mini costs you less than $50 at retail, while a 500 GB SSD might cost three times that amount. That’s because Apple continues to offer that model with a spinning hard disk drive, and that murders performance. I never expected it to win any races, but what kills the Mac mini compared to the MacBook Air isn’t the CPU or the RAM. It comes with a 1.4 GHz CPU and 4 GB of RAM. Regardless, I strongly recommend considering it – not just for a 2014 Mac mini, but for any older Mac you’d like to pep up.Īt $499, the base-model Mac mini is Apple’s least-expensive Mac, half the price of the MacBook Air but not nearly as peppy. If you’re using one of these models and you’re looking for a good way to bump up the performance, an SSD is, quite frankly, one of the only things you can do (unlike older Mac minis, Apple soldered the RAM in place).
Take a look at a few images below or hit the link for the full teardown.I finally got around to upgrading my 2014 Mac mini with a solid state drive (SSD). The RAM is now also soldered to the logic board, and not user-upgradeable.The CPU is soldered to the logic board and not user-upgradeable.T6 Torx Security screws are intended to lock you out of your Mini, and make it hard to clean the fan or replace the hard drive.With the proper tools, disassembly is straight-forward and simple.There's no glue anywhere inside that needs to be removed while disassembling the Mini.Mac Mini Late 2014 Repairability: 6 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair).