Mac Mini eSATA Mod

stimpson

As requested on another thread, here's my Mac Mini eSATA mod.

My 2006 Mini does duty as a media box under the telly. Storage wise, I've been using many varied USB drives connected through a hub. I had 3x640GB USB/eSATA, 1 400GB USB/FW and a 1TB USB which was doing Time Machine duty. Most of these were connected through a USB Hub and the result was a mess of spaghetti, transformers and extension leads. Something had to give, so I figured to go all out and fix as many problems as I could.

After doing some research, I discovered that there was a mini PCI-e card that did 2 channel SATA that would fit in place of the Airport card, The Commell MPX-3132 is available here for 45 euro including postage:

http://www.mini-tft.de/xtc-neu/product_info.php/info/p42331_Commell-MPX-3132--Modul--Mini-PCIe--2x-eSATA-II.html

Hacking involved removing the Airport card, replacing with the MPX-3132, carefully routing the cables between the hard drive and the board. Then I had to Dremmel the aluminium case to run the cables out the back of the Mac. The process is described in detail here:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/mini_esata_card_mod/macmini_estatacard_mod.html

Here is the finished product:




The MPX-3132 is actually SATA, not eSATA as described, so I had to pick up 2 converters. They are available on that site for a couple of euros each. While this improved throughput substantially (480 Mb/s to 3 Gb/s) I was guided by the words of the philosopher Homer Simpson - "You can't go that far and not go further".

The MPX-3132 supports a feature of eSATA called port multiplication. This allows you to connect multiple drives through a single eSATA port. It should be noted that not all eSATA chipsets support this - indeed the existing apple chipset does not. So my next purchase was this:

http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?prodID=B259574

And this is it in action with 2 x 1 TB sata drives:



The drives slide in and out so you can slide new ones in in seconds, or even backup and drive, slide it out and store safely. It's whisper quiet and takes 1 standard kettle plug and one eSATA lead. Also has USB 2.0 port in case you need to use it somewhere else. I did find a 5 bay one in Mac Mini Bushed aluminium but it was silly money.

Oh, the standard Mac drivers for the chipset don't work with this card, but the RAID ones work 100%. Yes, you can run this in RAID for excessive speed and bragging rights, but no I don't bother, and I don't recommend it.

So, is it worth it? Well, the down side is that you can't boot off the drives. the upside is that you have full speed 7200RPM (or 10,000RPM!) drives in a tidy little box with plenty of expansion capability. 2 boxes loaded with 2TB drives is 16TB! Backing up is easy as they are hot swappable - unmount, slide out a drive, slide in a new one, mount and clone, unmount, remove and replace with the original. As for performance:

Original 2.5" 5400rpm



1TB USB 2 drive



1TB eSATA

condra

class

Talisman

Thanks for posting this. I may give it a go myself.

stimpson

It's a great mod. Post up here if you need any advice.

stimpson

This is now up for sale in my Adverts if anyone wants to give it a good home.