I swapped out the 320 gig disk in my 2010 mini not long ago, I replaced it with a 1 TB to hold audio imported into iTunes with the Apple lossless codec. I managed to do the swap without disconnecting anything other than the SATA cable. I tried disconnecting the thermal sensor wires, but due to the age of the hardware, I figured it would turn out badly trying to get those tiny brittle plastic connectors apart. So with some careful work I got the sensors unstuck from the old disk and placed on the new one, got it into place, tightened all fasteners, and reassembled. Now this box, which is dedicated to CD importing and streaming audio via iTunes, can hold all the CDs I have on hand to import and then some.

I swapped out the disk in an i5 mini yesterday. I had previously done one in a 2011 model i7 server and it gave me such fits with aligning the screws in the grommets and getting the antenna plate back in place, I was hesitant to ever try swapping one again. This one took all of ten minutes. The drive went right into place and the antenna plate went in and its screw holes and the hard disk screw holes lined up with the plate with scarcely any effort. The most difficult part was actually getting the black plastic cover off the original disk to swap on to the new one. Boy with it working out that well I may get brave enough to try installing a second disk in the box.

(cont'd) I put a 32 gig SD card in the adapter for testing, then put the adapter into the ZIF adapter and slid it in. I had a 32 gig solid state Classic to show for my efforts. I synced some music and tried playing through some headphones to see what I got, after all this was a cheapie secondhand 'Pod so had to find out if it'd work. Works great.

I see that Other World Computing has a more elegant part going straight from ZIF to SD, I think I'll try that. The slim 7th gen doesn't look like it'll hold the adapter contraption in there now. I haven't tried closing it yet since I need a bigger SD.

A few weeks back I saw someone selling a 160 gig Classic on LetGo for $35 and decided to get it. Got home and discovered why the price was so low, the disk could not be accessed when I tried a restore. So I ordered up some parts from Amazon, a ZIF to CF adapter board and a CF to SD adapter. Ran about $20 for the pair. I went to Harbor Freight Tools to see about a putty knife but decided to get a razor blade with handle that I found in the paint scraping aisle where the putty knives were. Turned out this was the only tool I needed to get the clips undone while not uglifying the iPod. I pried on the edge of the back case like the instructions show using the putty knife to do, then a very small amount of persuasion by placing a small flathead screwdriver in the gap and a bit of twisting got it apart.

I did the opposite myself. I have an old 1TB TC that I took the disk out of and swapped in a WD green 250 gig disk, and repurposed the 1 TB in a server. I use the disk in the TC for sharing files via AFP. That works great by forwarding port 548 through my router, then I can share files with people I want to. Throughput sure could be better going to the TC.

I have a couple others on hand, one 500 gig courtesy of craigslist and I also found a 2 TB a few months back in a pawn shop. Speaking of those, I notice only the 1 TB TC flickers its green light when there is activity, the others just have a steady green light. Is there a model/generation reason why that is?