next step is to install to the new external disk.This is not the case for these old mac minis, so you don’t need to worry about that. I saw conflicting information about how you needed to enable booting from an external drive.It needs to be set to a GUID Partition Map, and apart from that you’re good. Make sure disk utility is showing ‘all devices’ rather than ‘all volumes’ in the little view dropdown menu. plug in your SSD and then erase it in disk utility.Do not! Instead command-Q yourself out of there. (Older versions are readily (legitimately) available online, you just have to google for them.) Once you’ve finished downloading the 12.6 GB, you’ll be prompted to install. It’s available in the App Store, even if you’ve already got it installed. download the installer for the OS you’d like to use.The process (well, my process) was as follows: But in the case of the mini, which just sits on a set of drawers here in the study and never moves, it’s totally fine.

So small! It’s honestly hard to believe how small hard disks can be these days.) Obviously you’re not going to want to do this on a laptop the connection (in this case via USB) would just be too fragile to sustain running an OS from it. (As an aside, it’s a lovely little bit of hardware. I ordered (as I mentioned a while back) a Samsung T5 portable SSD (500 GB).

I had nothing to lose (apart from my sanity, mwahaha), so thought I’d at least have a go. I would have to walk away and come back, just to open (for example) system preferences.īut! Several folk online also mentioned that doing an install of the operating system to an external SSD resulted in a new lease of life for their minis. Not just a bit of old-computer-sluggishness launching an application took many minutes to start up, accompanied by non-stop beachballing. I didn’t realise that these late-2014 mac minis were so painfully slow when I first ordered mine, but after a bit of frustrated googling found out that many, many people were complaining about their performance. This has been my view for much of the weekend, but after setting up the external disk for the mac mini (late-2014 model) the experience has been extremely enjoyable-rather than the exercise in frustration the last few years have been.

Setting up an external SSD on the mac mini

Mac mini with external ssd