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. ;-)"