I ran screaming from the 2014 Mac Mini

Mi Problema

After the 2014 Mac Mini was released, I immediately went to Amazon and bought a quad-core late-2012 Mac Mini with 1TB hard drive. And a 256GB Samsung SSD. And a pair of 8GB memory modules.

My goal was to end up with a maxed-out Mac Mini with a Fusion Drive.

Mi Solución

The upgrade was very straightforward. I didn't have any issues with disassembly. The magnetic project mat was wonderful.

The worst problem I had was tucking away the power supply cable with two disks installed.

The only other problem was that the disk end of the new cable is quite delicate.

Mi Consejo

Before starting disassembly, I went through the iFixit guide carefully and wrote down the step number in the project mat squares where I would put the teensy parts, and wrote down the name of anything that wouldn't fit on the mat.

I read a lot of comments from various readers commenting on one thing or another. Here're are my experiences...

1) Some people say that you have to push down on the bottom cover when turning. This is totally not true - you just need to turn the cover and only push down as much as you need to grab the dimples with your fingers. Pushing down makes it harder to rotate.

7) I had a really hard time getting the cowling back in place. It had to be firmly pulled out and really didn't want to go back in. I suggest that you pay careful attention when removing it.

10) The antenna connector was covered with a thin plastic cover.

12) When you remove the HDD cable, note how it looks and feels in its neutral position. When I put things back together, they didn't feel like as perfect a fit as I expected.

19) I had a hard time getting the power supply cable tucked back in with two disks installed. When you take out the logic board, have a careful look at where the cable is routed.

28) Be careful with the HDD connector on the new cable. In the picture, see the thin circuit-board-like plate on the back of the connector - between the thumb and forefinger on the left? That snapped right off. It's not an electrical element, but I stuck it back on with sticky tape. (Not duct tape. :-)

32) Based on a lot of comments, I moved the original HDD from its original position to the "buried" (top) drive location. That requires putting the original cable/connector on the SSD, and the new iFixit cable on the original HDD.

33) The plastic shroud around the original HDD covers two of the screw holes needed to mount the HDD in the buried position, so I had to snip off a couple of bits of the shroud.

Finally) I wanted a Fusion Drive, and there's a ton of obsolete information on the web about how to create one. OS X Maverick will take care of it for you. Just fire up Disk Utility from the OS install USB drive and it will offer to put the SSD and HDD back together as a Fusion drive. Back up your data first, however!