it seems like the more people I talk to
the more people tell me they're using
Mac minis for their home theater setup
which totally makes sense considering
their tiny size and relatively
inexpensive price tag if I were going
that route my biggest concern would be
that I have enough hard drive space to
store all of my TV shows and movies hi
I'm MJ with iFixit and today I'm going
to show you how to upgrade the hard
drive in a core duo Mac Mini this video
is a great overview of the process but
of course when you're upgrading your
hard drive you'll want to follow the
step by step instructions and the repair
guide on our site the version that I'm
working on is a core duo model and while
the process is very similar for the Core
2 Duo model there are enough differences
that you want to make sure you're
following the guide specific to your
model with Mac Mini I know that the lack
of visible screws can be intimidating
but with a little bit of gentle prying
and some patience you will be in and out
of there in no time that all being said
I'm going to get my parts and tools
together so I can get started for this
repair you're going to need a set of
small tweezers a plastic spudger a
phillips double zero screwdriver and of
course your replacement hard drive
typically I would use a bit from one of
our bit driver kids but because some of
these screws are kind of difficult to
access I would recommend using a
dedicated driver instead and of course
you're gonna need something to pry open
your Mac Mini so if you've got a putty
knife laying around you can file down
the edge of that and it'll work fine I'm
going to use a tool called an ice s
ammo' which is designed specifically for
opening up electronics so it's a little
more forgiving than a putty knife and
that means it'll probably cause less
cosmetic damage when you're opening up
your machine so if you're concerned
about cosmetic damage I would go for the
ice s mo to get started I'm going to
flip the Mac Mini over so that the back
is facing me and then I'm going to use
my ice s ammo' to start prying away the
aluminum case from the bottom housing
I'm going to start back near this corner
and it might require a little more force
than you're comfortable with as soon as
I get that part up I'm just going to
start going around the edge and lifting
the rest of the edges up
once all the edges are lifted up and
you've got a nice gap between the bottom
housing and the aluminum case you're
going to flip the Mac Mini over again
and the aluminum case should just lift
up and off at this point you can do a
little dance because with the top case
off we're actually done with the hardest
part the next thing we're going to do is
remove the internal frame which includes
the optical drive from the housing and
to start we're going to remove the
airport antenna by squeezing these two
little posts and lifting it off you
don't want to squeeze too hard because
you might break the post so be gentle
now the antenna is still attached to the
computer so don't go yanking it off but
we can't just kind of drape it over to
the side for now the next thing we're
going to work on is disconnecting the
audio board cable and the hard drive
thermal sensor cable the audio board
cable is a standard ZIFT style connector
so once the locking mechanism is lifted
up the cable just comes right out
the hard drives thermal sensor cable is
a little trickier because it's pretty
small connector and it's in a tight spot
so we're going to use our tweezers to
grasp the connector not the wires and
then pull it straight up and out it
might be useful if you use your spudger
to kind of guide the connector out of
its socket now that those cables are
disconnected we can get to work on the
four screws that are holding the frame
in place these screws are kind of
difficult to access so this is where
having a dedicated driver comes in handy
especially one that's magnetized
with those screws out the frame should
just lift up and out pretty easily slow
and steady is good though because you
don't want to snag any cables on the way
out it's the frame out we can flip it
over and there's the hard drive the hard
drive is held in place by four Phillips
screws so I'll go ahead and remove those
with this last screw out the hard drive
shouldn't slide out pretty easily
with the old hard drive out all I've got
to do is transfer this foam tape to my
new hard drive install my new hard drive
and reassemble my computer of course
before you use it you're going to have
to install the operating system and if
you need help with that there is a handy
OS 10 install guide on our site to get
you up and running of course you can
find all of the parts and tools for this
and many other repairs at ifixit.com and
if you run into any problems doing your
repairs there are lots of solutions and
the Mac Mini repair guide on our site if
you're watching this on youtube don't
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