How to best setup two internal drives in a mac mini 2012?

[isoneedacoffee]

Hi everyone,

I'm pouring some new life into my old mac mini 2012. It'll have 16gb of RAM, and I have bought a Samsung EVO 860 250gb SSD for the OS + applications + plugins + ? (I'll get to that in a bit). With the Mac Mini I can add a second internal drive for storage purposes. I really would prefer to keep it at two total for everyday work, and only use externals for backup purposes. I have two related questions:

1) I was thinking of getting a Barracuda 1tb 7200 hdd for storage, but I am finding that I can get a Samsung EVO 860 at the same price, but only 500GB. But with so much online streaming of film and music, I find that I don't save as much as I used to. I would like to keep space however for photos. If it's any indication, I have a bloated computer right now with one drive that's really only hitting about 360GB total.

Of course a 5400rpm drive would be far cheaper, but I'm not sure that's a good idea... and especially not advisable if I have my audio files on it when I am working on a project.

2) Which brings me to question 2. Where should I put the audio files of projects I am currently working on? The SSD drive of my OS + applications? Or the second drive that will have photos, work documents, etc? Would it make a difference in terms of computer performance if my audio files were on a secondary drive that's ssd vs 7200rpm vs 5400 rpm? Please note, I don't work with samples or virtual instruments. I know that in those case the differences can be enormous.

[surferman]

I put in two 500gb ssd's in my 2012 mac mini and it works great. The drive for audio files in a DAW project could have issues with the 5400 rpm drive and depending on size, even with the 7200. Audio files for listening would be no problem but if you are using them in your DAW for drum or other samples I think you may notice a problem at times.

[isoneedacoffee]

I put in two 500gb ssd's in my 2012 mac mini and it works great. The drive for audio files in a DAW project could have issues with the 5400 rpm drive and depending on size, even with the 7200. Audio files for listening would be no problem but if you are using them in your DAW for drum or other samples I think you may notice a problem at times.

Thx for the reply. Are your audio files in your OS/DAW drive, or the other one?

[Tj Shredder]

Isn‘t at the moment 1TB ssd cheaper than 2 500GBs? The prices came down significantly and one big drive is always better than two, especially with ssds... If you use 2, according to Murphy the wrong one will have not enough space.
It would make sense to combine a ssd with a 2 TB hard drive though... But then you will need twice the space for your backup as well...

[Michael L]

I went through a similar process with a mini. I have a SSD and a HDD, but I got a big enough SSD (3x my current need) so I could move audio files from the HD to the SSD when needed. I used a utility that mapped all my audio folder sizes so I could carefully plan what-went-where, and clarify the flow of files among folders and drives. It took me longer than expected to get it all organised but it was worth it. Disk rpm and transfer speed are equally important.

[jancivil]

Where should I put the audio files of projects I am currently working on? The SSD drive of my OS + applications? Or the second drive that will have photos, work documents, etc?s

There is no real problem keeping the project audio on the SSD system drive. Personally I, once there are renders and more or less finished audio for later listening etc, would keep those on a separate drive with the photos, movies, entertainment files but mainly to keep from taking up space on the audio work drive. Or on a 2nd partition of a backup drive, which can be a mechanical 7200rpm job; modern SSDs are not the bottleneck just due to system functions spinning drives are, but for pure storage or your non-crucial/work I don't feature 7200 as a big deal. I wouldn't like 5400 for anything.