“The new Apple Mac mini is one terrific entry-level consumer Mac and we have a base 1.25GHz model that came with 256MB RAM and a 4200RPM 40GB hard drive for $499,” Bill Fox reports for Macs Only! “According to our previous tests, the base 256MB of RAM is perfectly adequate for usual computer use that most price-concious consumers would engage in. It is not necessary to have more RAM unless one is working with large images, large sets of images or large files where lots of disk swapping happens. But what about the hard drive?”
“The Mac mini is significantly faster with the 7200RPM Hitachi 60GB drive (model 7K60). It will make many operations snappier, more so than by adding additional RAM for most people. However, the cost of the 60GB Hitachi drive with shipping is nearly $200 so we can’t really recommend it to the price-conscious consumer, the Mac mini’s target market,” Fox reports.
Full article with benchmark results here.
4200 RPM is dark ages technology. I remember that speed in the mid 90s. 7200 RPM has been around for years. It should be the minimum standard IMHO. But price points dictate specs, and Apple went with the bare minimum. The primary bottleneck concern is 256 MB RAM. That’s the squeezer.
4200/7200 RPM Stinks…But then again, Dont harddrives suck in general…
iMaki; 256 mb ram isnt the bottleneck dude, until someone comes up with static memory that runs cool and has a high capacity, HDD’s will be everyones bottleneck, whether a Mac, PC or a server.. HDD’s are SSSSLLLLOOOOWWWW….I just upgraded my Athlon 64 to 3 – 73 GB 10,000 RPM drives on SATA/RAID. Although there was a significant increase in performance on all levels. It still just isnt enough for the speeds of CPU’s and Memory.
Are you sure the 40GB is a 4200 RPM drive? The Macworld speed test claims the 40 GB is a 5400RPM drive.
http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/reviews/macminireview/index.php
“One surprise in our testing appeared when we tested the hard-drive access speed by duplicating 500MB of data. The 1.25GHz Mac mini beat the faster 1.42GHz model by 10 seconds. Upon further investigation, we found that the 1.25GHz model actually contains a 5,400RPM drive, despite Apple’s claim that it contains a 4,200RPM drive. The 1.42GHz model, does contain the slower 4,200RPM drive.”
Apple didn’t use “dark ages” technology, they used a SMALL drive. A laptop drive.
In regards to the hard drives:
1.) Some Mac Mini’s shipped with either 4200 or 5400RPM drives.
2.) Wouldn’t a 7200RPM drive be too hot for the insides of a Mac Mini
so anyone with a 80GB drive out of there mini that they are trying to get rid of, yeah let me know.
ill take the slower drive for my iBook. i already got a 4200 and the speed is ok, but i could use the space.
let me know
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This stuff is great, who gives a shit whether its a 4,200 or a 5,400 speed drive, or if you are gonna get the last nano second of speed out of it. Take a pill
lol
oh and to Mr NoMacForU, my daul g5 with 4gig ram and twin 250gig hard drives would burnnnnnnnnnn ur in 64 bit athalon (fisher Price) thingyl box.
So there
lol
Heat, heat, heat……..I’ll take 4,200rpm over 7,200rpm in a little mac mini. You can purchase a new one in a year or so while I’ll have mine ticking for 3+ years.
40GB is fine…I’ll hook up one of my 5 external firewire drives (1.1TB). Too bad for my friends who opted for the $10 cheaper USB 2.0 external hd enclosure as it won’t work quite as good in MacOS X.
btw, my decision to purchase a mac mini was pretty much sealed when I read the entire PDF for MacOS X developer technology overview. Just an incredible read.
i don’t think a 7200 rpm drive is practical for a mac mini. i would be really worried about the heat because of the cramped space.
however, if you do want one of the travelstars that he mentions(7k60), you can check on the bargain sites(anandtech’s hot deals forum or fatwallet forums). you can usually get it for much less than $200.
PDF LINK
Cricket,
There is a new server class model designed (among other things) to put out less heat:
http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2460
Dont’ worry about the heat. I’ve got a Travelstar 7k60 in my mini. For months it was in my 12″ PowerBook. It is much faster. Benchmarks can’t describe “snappiness”, but the author is correct to ay that a faster drive can mean more in performance gains than more memory.
That said, I don’t think swpping the hard drive in a mini is for the average consumer who would hesitate to swap the drive in a tower PC/Mac.
Go with External firewire. They have shown similar gains without the technical difficulties. Opening a mini with any wireless option is very difficult. Of course with practice it gets easier, but most people would only do it once.
Get a faster drive in any case though. It’s worth it when you get that not so fast feeling.
256MB work as long as you only run 1 app. at a time.
if you start a second app then 512 is min. required.
absent…
funny, but a lie.
i have 256, and I can run games, with itunes playing in the background, in addition to 3 more apps.
The results do not justify the extra costs… unless you like to shut down many times a day.
Hey HUGO….Bring it.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> whipper snapper..it already beats my dual G5 2.5 LC
“Air” as in I smell smoke in the air…
How many 1″ drives would fit in the same physical space as the current Mac Mini HDD space?
5?
60gb x 5 = 300gb
Here’s an idea: Xserve Mini Raid the same dimensions as Mac Mini
Great stuff..!! There are a lot of valuable info… Its really great