Does 2011 Mac mini have proprietary hard drive thermal sensors?

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. ;-)"

"Hi, Jrstech!

Well, let me see if I can help you find this out. Is it a Momentus 7200.4? Apple has been using a lot of Toshiba drives for its 500GB 5400rpm configurations, including the Mac mini with the Core i5 and the AMD GPU that you have as well as the new 2011 MacBook Pro's. I don't like the Toshiba 5400 drives, as they are mediocre drives. They used 500GB Seagate 7200rpm drives in the high end mini, although in my case, it doesn't matter anymore, as I finally installed my 2nd OWC SSD.

Rest assured that you have made a significant upgrade to your machine. I say this with such confidence, because that's exactly what I did with the Toshiba 750GB 5400rpm drive that I found in the 2011 17"" MBP that I had for approx. 2 months, which retails well over $2,500 without tax. The first thing I did was upgrade it to a Hitachi 7200rpm drive and while it is certainly no SSD, the difference was significant enough for me to feel it in day-to-day use.

And this is also where a quick response to the OP's revised question/comment fits in:

Quoting OP: <<(...)+ for a very well written and thorough question. Want to know the answer to this myself. I love Apple products, but it seems like Apple tries to ties us consumers down more and more as time passes. Things like this are done intentionally to force the consumer to upgrade through Apple. Another example is how Lion only supports Trim for SSD's supplied by Apple. If you want to enable Trim support for any other SSD, you have to do some fancy hacking. Apple's business practices are starting to really suck!!!>>

I do agree with you on this and as I just stated above, it felt almost as if, after buying a 17"" MacBook Pro, there was another step to be performed. Why can't a $2500 MBP come with a decent hard drive? Well, I think we know why, but BTO (Built-To-Order) options are not available in a store, so it's almost as if you're stuck until your 7200rpm drive arrives in the mail before you can really feel that you have a ""complete"" system on your hands, with all high-end components. The stock 5400rpm drive almost made the 2011 17-incher ""look bad"" with all of its otherwise high-end components, i.e. Quad Core i7-2720QM with clock speeds of up to 3.3GHz, Turbo Boost permitting, the AMD 6750M 1GB GDDR5 GPU, and ThunderBolt, to name the most well known and advertised examples.

There is, however, one part missing on the spec sheet that gets mentioned quite rarely and that is the SATA III capability, which can, of course, mean the kind of mind-blowing speeds that we have recently seen with all of the new SATA III 6Gbps-compliant solid state drives. What surprises me here is the fact that yes, Apple loves to sell the overpriced SSD's from Samsung and Toshiba, and collect healthy profits for itself, but they are only SATA II drives. Therefore, all ""Apple SSD's"" (read: Samsung/Toshiba) are significantly slower than other 3rd party SATA III SSD's. Often times, Apple likes to downplay the difference of new (as well as existing) technologies as ""not worth pursuing"" because...(insert your favorite Apple explanation here). In case of SATA III vs. SATA II, the difference, however, is nothing short of stunning, amazing, mind-blowing, and maybe even...""magical""? I kid you, Steve Jobs, I do. We all love you! :-P

To be fair, I also want to point out that replacing the hard drives in the 2011 Mac mini is somewhat easier than in the previous generation 2010 model, as it no longer uses the type of thermal sensors that Apple used in the 2010 models. At the same time, Apple made sure that upgrading the 2011 iMac's all but impossible with the use of its new proprietary SATA connection. This move cannot be explained away other than to recognize that this is a sincere attempt by Apple to keep us from using our own equipment in the 2011 iMac line, and the SATA III argument very much applies here as well."

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.