Mac Mini - A Desktop Computer that fits into the palms of two hands.

I've been buying nothing but laptops (including MacBook Pros) for the last 16 years. It made no sense to me to get a desktop computer anymore.

unless portability is a big concern then desktops are just flat out superior.

Desktops give you a bigger screen/more power for less $$$ etc.

ill take a Desktop over a Laptop any day in the long run for my primary computer. if someone wants something portable i figure just about any semi-modern phone will be good enough for basic use. but when you really want to use your computer then a desktop is hard to beat.

p.s. a good 1TB SSD won't be cheap... it's currently (on newegg.com) $320 for Samsung 850 Evo 1TB or $423 for Samsung 850 Pro 1TB (i know there are other decent brands etc but i used Samsung since they are a popular SSD drive). personally i would save the cash and get Evo because unless your writing A LOT of data to it you won't exhaust the write cycles on either of those two drives for a long time.

just looking at my own Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD which i had since May 2015 i have only written 3.77TB to it (in about 1 year and 3 months) and it appears the official specs for Evo(250GB say it will do 75TB. but it's likely well over that before it actually fails though (assuming the drive does not die from other random means first). but even if it did say 75TB of writes, at my current rate i would get AT LEAST 20 years out of it before it died from wearing out. NOTE: i usually keep most of the bigger downloads to my hard drives though to cut back on writes to the SSD where i can. if even you wrote 10TB (i.e. 10,000 GB(which is a lot)) a year to it, which is unlikely for most people, that's still likely a decade or longer before it dies and will you even still be using that in 10+ years time? ; for many i would say probably not.

also, the 500GB/1TB Evo SSD's have a 150TB write endurance rating (which is conservative as in the drives people tested online they tend to go well over that before the drive starts to fail) which is double the 250GB Evo i got. but like i say my SSD won't be dying of due to write cycles anytime in the foreseeable future.

but write stuff aside... the Evo has a 5 year warranty where as the Pro has a 10 year warranty.

purely in terms of storage space though... you can get a lot more space for much less as a HGST 4TB is typically $140-160 where as the HGST 5TB is typically $180-200. in fact, i just ordered the HGST 5TB on Newegg (ordered it Friday(ill probably have it by the end of the week)) for $180. because at the current price it's $157.49 for the 4TB or $179.99 for the 5TB HGST and for a bit over $20 you get another 1TB i could not pass it up as it's on sale at the moment(not long ago the 4TB was on sale for $139.99). if you want to play it a little safer though there is more reliability data on the 4TB models where as the 5TB and larger are fairly new and have not been as proven yet. but i don't expect there will be any big gap between the two.

but once i get that 5TB hard drive... ill have more than doubled my total storage space so i can make a backup copy of basically all of my data onto it as i got a 250GB/400GB/1TB/2TB hard drives inside of my computer but not long ago i removed the 250GB and used it for external storage on a USB 3.0 hard drive dock (with USB 3.0 it will max out the hard drives speed where as with USB 2.0 you will be limited to about 30MB/s) and i plan on removing the 400GB to and using it as external storage once the 5TB arrives.

my current total storage space counting internal/external storage (on hard drives)... 250GB/400GB/1TB/2TB/160GB/160GB/80GB = 4050MB (i.e. 4.05TB) (the two 160's and 80 is external storage though and the 250GB, which i had for 10 years, i recently removed from the computer and used it as external to). that's not counting my 250GB SSD drive either but i generally limit my use of that as it's not good to fill those up as they need a certain amount of free space to function optimally. so i mostly just install stuff to it that will benefit from a speed increase (i.e. Windows loading/programs loading/games loading etc) since it loads stuff really fast vs a hard drive.

$180 will be the most i ever paid for a hard drive as i usually don't exceed $130-ish tops in the past but considering how much space i am getting it's still a deal vs what i paid for my 1TB/2TB hard drives years ago when you break down the $ per GB. because even with the current $180 for 5TB that's sorta like 2.5TB for $90 which is not bad at all. they have 3TB hard drives (from HGST) but they are basically pointless to get given the 4TB is only about $20 more (i.e. $137 vs 157) for another 1TB.

but with that 5TB i should be good for the foreseeable future as even with having backup copies of my more important data ill still have plenty of additional space and even my total 4050MB (not counting the 5TB(i.e. 5000GB) hard drive) is not all full either even though i only got about 364GB of free space between the 1TB/2TB/400GB drives at the moment. in the future... when i get more storage space, which will be a matter of time, ill likely remove the 1TB/2TB upon another hard drive purchase and use those as external storage to.

p.s. HGST seems to be considered the most reliable brand of hard drives according to BackBlaze... https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/ (article date is May 2016) ; they tend to cost a bit more than cheaper hard drives but with that much data i figure reliability is the pretty much biggest concern in my book (well price is a factor to). plus, they come with a 3 year warranty instead of the crap 2 year warranty that most typical hard drives have when not all that long ago 3 years was standard. so if you don't mind gambling then you can get cheaper hard drives with same level of storage or more storage around those price ranges.


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My Top 100-ish Movies of All-Time! = http://goo.gl/EYFYdz
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unless portability is a big concern then desktops are just flat out superior. My current MacBook Pro hasn't died or anything, so it will still be available to me as a portable option. In fact, I'm going to keep using it on the side next to my Mac mini desktop screen for some small things even when I'm staying in one place.

SSD is the future - it's expensive now, but I think it's worth the expense as part of the Mac mini.

After getting the Mac mini, my next expense will be to upgrade the screen. 

SSD is the future - it's expensive now, but I think it's worth the expense as part of the Mac mini.

ill say this...

while SSD's are faster, hard drives are more reliable for general data storage (they are more time tested to) as if a SSD dies it won't likely give any warning signs like a hard drive usually will. so if you got a bunch of data on it and it dies, poof it's gone. like could be working great one minute and the next it just dies.

either way, regular hard drives are going to be the best option for the foreseeable future for those who want a lot of storage space for a reasonable price as even when SSD's get cheaper and more storage space they still cant compete with regular hard drives for $$$ per GB. but i guess if say 1-2TB or something like that is good enough for your storage needs and your not too concerned about data loss and price then SSD is a good choice because it's fast and silent and compact since it's basically 2.5" hard drive size unlike a regular desktop's 3.5" hard drive which is bigger/heavier.

SSD's are mostly good because they are fast and they are nice for booting windows and programs/games etc as things tend to load up much quicker. that's their primary function.

i know in some ways SSD's are theoretically better since they don't have moving parts like a regular hard drive. so they 'might' be more reliable in some ways but like i say they are more susceptible to data corruption from power outages etc.

with all of that said... modern SSD's are much better than the early days from what i have read where there was problems quite a bit and they where tiny size for a bunch of $$$. but now they are affordable (about $90 for a 250GB good brand etc) and much more reliable then they once where and up to a decent size to as, like i said before, i don't recommend getting any SSD smaller than about 250GB just to make sure you can install a moderate amount of stuff without having space issues.

p.s. also, earlier this year i had a power outage which took out my Windows installation on the SSD etc. so in short i had to format and reinstall from scratch. that's never happened to me before so it could have been a fluke as i have had power outages here and there over the years and never had that happen with a regular hard drive (i had the SSD about a year when it happened(i got the SSD in May 2015)). i have not had a power outage since the last one that corrupted the SSD and only way to fix it was to format and install Windows 10 from scratch as you could not boot safe mode or anything. it was probably mostly a fluke as the drives are supposed to have some protection against data corruption on a power outage but it's not rock solid and some SSD's apparently are better than others in terms of losing data in power outages. but in general i think it's safe to say regular hard drives are better than SSD's in this area.

$89.39 is the current price for my Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD drive on newegg right now. i don't recommend going any smaller than 250GB for a SSD though as those 120GB-ish SSD's are just a bit too small where as with 250GB that should give you enough room for your OS and programs and some games with a good amount of space left over as it's not good for the drive to be largely full in general as it can interfere with it's efficiency etc. i heard you generally don't want to exceed about 80% of it's capacity in use to keep things running smoothly. so in other words with a 250GB SSD drive you don't want to exceed about 200GB of it in use. mine is only about half full and will be much less once i get that new 5TB in the mail soon. but it will be nice to test my 5TB hard drives speed copying from SSD to 5TB since it will make out the 5TB drive where as my other hard drives i don't think they can because i am pretty sure the 5TB can write data faster than the 1TB/2TB hard drives (etc) can even read it from their drive. so in other words... the 1TB/2TB will be the bottleneck of the 5TB drives performance (like when transferring files from the 1TB/2TB to the 5TB). where as the SSD will easily max out the 5TB since the SSD is like lightning. i only got SATA 3Gb/s connection (i.e. SATA II (SATA III can do about 600MB/s)) which can only do about 300MB/s max (which means my Samsung 850 Evo SSD will be capped there (like it's max speed on my computer) even though the SSD itself is capable of going faster then 300MB/s it simply cannot due to the limit of the SATA II connection) but the 5TB can't hit those speeds so it won't be slowed down by my SATA II connection where as SATA III is faster but it won't be of any benefit given the hard drive is the limiting factor so whether you got a SATA II or SATA III connection with the 5TB hard drive it makes no difference since i don't think that drive can do more than 1xxMB/s (maybe 200MB/s tops).

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My Top 100-ish Movies of All-Time! = http://goo.gl/EYFYdz
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What I think I'll do when the time comes (when I buy the Mac mini with the 1TB SSD) will be to keep one or two external regular hard drives for data backups.

What I keep on my Macbook Pro now are mostly iTunes Library movies and songs; my own photographs and videos; and my Photoshop files. All of these take up a lot of space but they're easily backed up.

What I think I'll do when the time comes (when I buy the Mac mini with the 1TB SSD) will be to keep one or two external regular hard drives for data backups.

Yeah, that's pretty much what people tend to do since you get the best of both worlds...

SSD = for stuff that needs to load quick.

regular hard drive = for data storage. since it's much cheaper etc.

and yeah, depending on how important the data is... it's probably best to have three copies (two at the very least(with one probably being external)). say one hard drive, one hard drive, and maybe even DVD media etc. or... if $$$ is not a issue three copies spread on three different hard drives (with at least one being a external hard drive and not always in use on the computer in case by the off chance you get a computer virus etc and your data gets destroyed you will still have that external copy) should be pretty secure as if you lost your data doing that it would be surprising. but i don't have too much data that i would be really upset if i lost even though most of what i have i would rather not lose so i figure the two copies method should be secure enough and i am not likely to get infected with a computer virus etc in general. but i do have some external drives (just regular drives i removed from my computer recently that i am only using in the external USB 3.0 hard drive dock) for some data i got etc.

but anyways, it's not really worth buying 1TB hard drives given the cost per GB/TB ratio (unless of course your not going to need more than that in the foreseeable future in which case you can save some $$$). i would not go any less than 2TB and probably higher depending on cost difference etc.

right now with hard drives (taking a quick look around on newegg's website)...

1TB = roughly $50-70
2TB = roughly $75-ish
3TB = roughly $90-110 (the fancier ones are nearly $140 though)
4TB = generally $120-160(but for a quality one it's basically... $157.49 ($139.99 if you can get it on sale occasionally))
etc

so unless cost is paramount for you i would say 4TB is probably sweet spot where you get a lot of storage space without the cost going too high. but i guess the term 'too high' could vary from person to person but i figure as a general rule when buying hard drives expect to pay around $100 for one, maybe more depending on what your looking for.

main problem with hard drive manufacturers is that not all that long ago 3 year warranties were standard, now that seems to have shifted back to 2 years.

so while $50 for 1TB sounds like a decent price, and it is, you can see it's actually more expensive than the higher capacity drives given what your paying as i figure for about $25 more you can go from 1TB to 2TB and around $100 for a hard drive i figure is sorta expected.

i have seen one 2TB drive for a bit over $120 (not a bad price for a hard drive in general (considering i kind of expect to pay around $100 in general for them anyways)) but your basically buying a 5 year warranty with it's inflated price. but... it's just hard to pass up double that storage space for $20-40 more and still has a decent 3 year warranty. so i guess it just depends on how you look at things with cost/drive size/warranty etc in what's most important for you.

either way, in my opinion 2TB is probably the minimum i would go nowadays as it's still quite a bit of storage space and the price is still solid to where as anyone who can afford some decent storage space could not really complain about paying around $75 as i generally go into hard drive purchases, for many years now, expecting to pay around $100-120(give or take) in general if you want more of a decent capacity hard drive before the price starts to spike up too much.

i don't think i paid more than $130-ish tops for a hard drive until my very recent 5TB purchase @ $180 but since i was not going under 4TB then the 5TB i ended up buying was the best all around choice given the prices right now and i won't have space issues for basically quite a few years at this point and by the time i do i am sure say in 5 years or something hard drives will be larger and cheaper than they are now etc.

with all of that said... also, as a added bonus with higher capacity hard drive is they get faster because more data is packed into a smaller space that the hard drive head reads from (see my post about getting my 5TB hard drive below for a bit more info on this).

p.s. but i just stumbled into a 2TB refurbished hard drive for only $30 on newegg's website. the only catch... 90 day warranty. but for $30 for 2TB that's probably worth a gamble as if it dies in a year or so, the $$$ lost is minimal. but it does make you wonder though as for $30 that almost sounds too good to be true for 2TB but looking around it appears those drive are likely pulled from a server etc that was running 24/7 with plenty of writes to them. so they are more likely to be flaky in some aspects as it's sort of a gamble but for $30 it's kinda hard to pass up (as it's minimal $ losses if it does fail) if you don't mind gambling a bit and are not storing anything too important on it.

What I keep on my Macbook Pro now are mostly iTunes Library movies and songs; my own photographs and videos; and my Photoshop files. All of these take up a lot of space but they're easily backed up.

Yeah, i can imagine especially with HD video could burn up space quick or even if you got a fancy camera and take lots of photo's that space can get eaten up fairly quickly.

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i got my 5TB in on Wednesday and to do a full format is around 9 hours to complete :( (but that's normal though at that capacity as nothing is wrong with the drive) ; i could have went with a quick format (it's seconds to complete so you can store data on it) but a full format helps ensure the drive is good and i did not want to risk having a bad 5TB drive (i also ran some other tests to).

"5,000,845,586,432 bytes" is the capacity of the HGST 5TB drive i got. so it's nearly 846MB over 5TB which is a little bonus. also, the manufacture date on the drive is April 2015.

also, when transferring some of larger files from my 2TB (Samsung hard drive) the 5TB was limited by the 2TB as it(the 2TB) could only read data around 115MB/s for the bulk of the transfer but it did hit 135MB/s, give or take, occasionally even though the 5TB can go even faster. so basically the 2TB drive was the bottleneck. but i am sure if i had a large file on my SSD drive and then transferred from there to the 5TB it would then max out the 5TB hard drive which should be roughly somewhere in the high 1xxMB/s range (i.e. more than 150MB/s at the least). ill probably test this for kicks at some point or even run HD Tune v2.55 (it's free software) on it as that should show a decent graph of it's speed etc.

p.s. if you wait a bit it's likely you will see the HGST 4TB for $139.99 on newegg.com soon enough even though it's typical price lately is $157.49. but i went with the 5TB because at the moment it's not much over $20 more for another 1TB of storage (which is the one i got for $180 (normally $200)) and i could not pass that up even though $180 is a little steep for a hard drive but it still offers solid $$$/TB ratio though as at the moment comparing the $157.49 drive to the $179.99 drive (just call it $157.50 vs $180 to round it a bit) it comes out to... $39.38 per 1TB of storage. the 5TB i got comes out to $36.00 per 1TB of storage. either way, 6TB seem to be about the highest you can go before price starts to just become too much as the 8TB+ drives just ain't worth it, reliable or not, at the moment given their prices are just too much for the average person.



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My Top 100-ish Movies of All-Time! = http://goo.gl/EYFYdz
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Yeah, i can imagine especially with HD video could burn up space quick or even if you got a fancy camera and take lots of photo's that space can get eaten up fairly quickly. A six-minute HD video from my camera is over 1GB.

A full-length HD movie is between 3-5GB, usually.

I have Wondershare's VideoConverterUltimate to bring video sizes to reasonable levels so that I can make a movie on a DVD.

Meanwhile, collecting the original video files from my camera takes up a lot of space so I can't store hours and hours of what I'm shooting with my camera on my current Macbook Pro system. I have to keep these files elsewhere until I need them for compressing and editing.


Thanks for all the information!!

Yeah, i see. so if you shoot video like that fairly commonly those hard drives will be full pretty quick as i am sure you already are well aware of.

i guess it just depends on the quality you want as i have converted 720p/1080p HD x264 (h264) video to SD here and there (with StaxRip (i.e. http://www.videohelp.com/software/StaxRip)) and the file size is much less for the occasion i want to use SD over HD. like typically 500-1000MB (usually no more than about 1.4GB high end) for SD @ 'CRF21 @ slow' setting.

basically it's .mkv(h264) video for the HD files i got and then i usually go back to SD on the stuff i find to be less important to conserve space.

p.s. but assuming 5GB per video for you that's basically at least 800+ videos you can do on a 4TB hard drive. or at least 200+ on a 1TB.

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My Top 100-ish Movies of All-Time! = http://goo.gl/EYFYdz
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You should look into refurb. You can save a lot of money and it's practically new.
What you want for $849.00

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/FGEQ2LL/A/Refurbished-Mac-Mini-28GHz-Dual-core-Intel-Core-i5