Chosen Solution

I have a mid-2011 i7 Mac mini and I’ve replaced the HD with a (non-Apple) SSD. It’s working great. When I use iStat Menus to view the sensor readouts for temperature/voltage/fan speed, etc, I note there is nothing listed for HD temperature. However, I have removed the Apple HD - as I said - so I can’t tell you definitely without replacing the original HD whether Apple use a thermal sensor built-in. On the other hand, I can assure you that the fan appears to work just fine. It idles silently, and turns the room into a wind tunnel when Flash is being played (all functioning normally, then :D ).

Just bought an mid 2011 i5 Mac Mini and replaced the Stock 500gb HD with a Scorpio Black 750gb. It works well and istat reports around 32 degrees for the drive although the fan now runs all of the time starting at around 1800rpm. I didn’t notice it before…. maybe the new apple drives do have some fancy firmware loaded onto them?

SUCESS: Notes on Installing SSD in 2011 Mac Mini hi all, I replaced the HD in my mac mini with a OWC Electra SSD 6G.

  1. Fan speed the same after; there is no sensor to worry about. According to the temp readouts from iStatPro, the hard drive temperature is still being read in this year’s model, likely via the S.M.A.R.T. hd interface. It’s uncertain if the mini’s one main exhaust fan factors this temp into its rotation speed. My SSD never changes in temp by more than a few degrees C.
  2. make sure to remove black plastic cover off of old hard drive before pulling SATA cable out of old HD; otherwise you won’t be able to.
  3. The OWC video guide is great, but you don’t need to pull out the motherboard; there is just enough room to slide the old HD out and the new one in.
  4. Installing Lion over the Internet with Int Recovery worked, but I had to change my wireless network from WPA2 security to WPA and disable uPNP; not sure why. Go with most basic/compatible settings, and as Crunch suggested below, use an Ethernet cable if at all possible. After Lion downloaded (4 hours), it installed in 4.2 minutes flat. Jaw-dropping speed. thanks all, d ps: mac mini exhaust fan speed of ~1800 rpm is normal under light load. PS: I used both the iFixit guide and the OWC video when I did my upgrade, and I needed both to do it right. Note that OWC suggests removing the motherboard to exchange the hd, but as iFixit points out, this is not necessary to get the HD out or the new one in.

I second Daniel’s post as to how there are not only no proprietary thermal sensor to be dealt with, as you can see in the OWC video, but there are none at all to contend with. I just purchased the second of two 120GB OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD’s, both with the new 32nm Toggle NAND flash. My plan is to RAID them, so as to achieve a 240GB speed monstrosity that will allow for data transfers of 900MB/s - 1GB/s. To do this, I will have to take the Mini apart almost completely, so as to swap the 2nd hard drive out for the 2nd SSD. I have the server edition of the Mac mini, so the 2nd proprietary SATA cable that is needed to install an SSD or hard drive is already there. I can’t wait to find out if it will make a noticeable difference, as just one of these SATA III (6Gbps) SSD’s are unbelievably fast. OS X installs in 4 minutes and change. Windows 7 in Boot Camp needs an extra minute or two and booting up is virtually instantaneous. Lion Server (which includes several server components) downloads for me in about 30-35 minutes. The speed of the download will depend on two things: For one, if your own Internet connection is not a healthy broadband setup, it will take well over an hour. Secondly, you should plug your Mini into your modem via Ethernet, instead of using WiFi. Even the strongest signal of an advanced multi-channel 802.11n wireless connection can never be as fast as a wired one. You also might want to make your own bootable Lion Installer on a USB flash drive and do the same for Windows 7, if you plan on using Boot Camp. I’d also recommend that you make your own USB Flash Recovery drive using the Recovery Assistant software that Apple recently posted on its website. This will help a lot, in case the (hidden) Recovery partition on whatever system drive you end up with gets corrupted or lost. That way, you won’t have to rely on any Internet connection at all if you ever need to re-install Lion. Sorry for the long post. I hope this will help the OP or someone else. I’ll post the results of several benchmark tests on both OS X 10.7 as well as Windows 7 64-bitas soon as my dual OWC SSD 6G setup is complete. ;-)

Mid 2010 Mac Mini Server (Macmini4,1 - Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz) The server had two hard drives (one formatted for the OS and the other for storage). Replaced the OS hard drive with a Samsung SSD. The removed HDD had a wire coming off it (turns out it was a thermal sensor) that the replacement SSD did not have. Upon reassembly and restart (after install of OS on SDD) the Mac Mini Server cooling fan went on high and stayed there. Problem was eventually solved by removing the thermal sensor from the old HDD and reinstalling the sensor in the Mac Mini Server (connector to mother board, sensor just stuck on something inside the case). /edit : ps. the sensor was simply stuck to the outside of the old HDD; removing it was merely a matter of sliding a razor blade between the sensor and the side of the HDD.

I have a mid-2011 i5 Mac mini and replaced the 500gb 5400 rpm drive with a Seagate 750gb 7200 momentus drive and can report that iStat is displaying status for the drive (32 degrees). Although this isn’t a SSD drive I did not buy it from Apple, possibly it is the same model that comes with the 750gb equipped mini’s.

I replaced my stock 500G drive with two 1T Samsung drives, been running almost a week now, 24hrs a day, non-stop. I’ve been copying data back and forth from both drives. I haven’t noticed any odd fan behavior. It does kick in when the system is under a load, but nothing I felt was in-appropriate. As soon as the system cooled off the fan slowed down. I’ve also been monitoring the temps with iStat and don’t see it getting very hot. Overall I’m very happy with my purchase and cheap and easy upgrade to a 2T system over Apple’s prices. The kit was very easy to install and the documentation is pretty clear and understandable. Even if you’re not technically inclined but not afraid to get your hands “dirty” you should be able to do this upgrade.

there’s loads of people complaining about fan issues after disk swaps … there’s got to be more to it. I’m one of the affected btw. I’m taking this piece of c to the “genious” bar so they can do another logic board replacement . Sorry about the rant but im so $@%%^& off.

The 2011 Mac mini is simply awesome! I put two SF-2281 SATA III SSD’s in RAID 0 and got speeds of nearly 1GB/s! Stunning. And beautifully small. Just gorgeous. Another example of “Good ridden’s, optical drives”! Can’t wait for Ivy Bridge and the new MacBook Pro’s: Relieve it from its useless SuperDrive and give us two SATA III bays. To make a laptop even thinner, there are many SSD’s that also come in 1.8" variants and except for high-capacity (480+GB 1.8" SSD’s) ones, they are equally as scorching fast! ;-)

I’m having problems. Bought a new core i5 mini that was made this past November. Installed a ssd immediately. It was fine for about 2 weeks then the fan started going crazy, spinning up and down. Sent it in to an authorized repair center, they determined it was the fan according to the tests it failed. Got it back and its still doing it! So im sending it back in again. I’m wondering if may they changed something and added custom firmware to the drives? Anyways, I have bad feeling this is going to end up being a “lesson learned the hard way” and have to buy a new one. :(

I just replaced the stock 5400 RPM drive in my i5 mini with a 256GB Crucial M4 and got the issue myself. Fan running full blast (~5500 RPM) constantly. I then tried putting the original HDD back in and still got the same afterward, so not sure if a sensor got knocked loose or what. I decided to put the M4 back in and let it run that way until I have time to take it to the geniuses, and now the fan isn’t maxed out but also iStat pro shows the fan speed at 0 RPM. Not sure if the fan connector got knocked loose or what. Will have to take it back apart to check the connector. I have ran the Apple diagnostic test on the machine and got this error code: 4SNS/1/C0000008:TMOP Which supports the theory that a temp sensor isn’t working properly. Anyway, this is all just to say that I have had issues with swapping out the HDD as well.

Hi . I got my motherboard replaced … i did the SSD swap and now it works perfectly… i’d recommend if someone is facing this issue … just take it to the apple store get it replaced and try again.. I’m using a ocz vertex 2. Thanks!