Phase two of my Mac mini mods involved swapping out the standard 60 GB 5400 RPM hard drive for a 100 GB 7200 RPM unit. As before, I followed the excellent instructional video from Other World Computing.
I chose the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 (HTS721010G9SA00) drive. Installation was as easy as the memory upgrade. Once you've taken the mini apart a few times, there's nothing to it. I didn't do before-and-after XBench runs, but the machine certainly feels quicker now. The mini is just as quiet as it was with the old drive. It's nearly inaudible and doesn't seem to run any hotter, either.
Now I have enough room to split the disk into two partitions and dual-boot OS X and Windows XP (courtesy of Apple's Boot Camp). I'll report on this once I get around to setting it up.
Phases three and four will involve upgrading the CPU to a >= 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo w/4 MB cache and a SuperDrive, not necessarily in that order. I want to live with it as-is for awhile in order to guage the effect of the drive upgrade over time. Plus, the 1.67 GHz Core Duo which came standard on the mini is no slouch. The SuperDrive is more a convenience than anything else. It'll allow me to burn DVDs.
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