Two Gingabytes
January 23rd, 2007
This might not seem like a big deal to you power users out there, but I finally got my memory upgrade to 2 Gingabytes! (Yes, that’s how you say “gigabyte” when you have a cold.) 
Upgrading the Mac Mini is for the adventurous, not for the faint of heart. Before you start, make sure that you have a bootable mirror of your hard drive just in case it all bites the dust. I use SuperDuper to make a nightly backup to my external LaCie mini 250GB, which also fits nicely under the Mac Mini. I also used Apple’s Disk Utility to partition the external drive into two drives – the partition I use for backing up is exactly the same size as my internal boot drive.
So, with full hard drive backup in hand I set out to crack the case of the Mini. And by “crack”, I mean, CRACK, which is the sound that the top makes coming off. It’s a scary sound when it’s coming from your primary workhorse.
I bought the memory from eBay, and I used the nice pictures at Applefritter to help me take it apart, and Robert Evans had some good advice.
Here’s my best advice so far: buy the Mac Mini with 2GB already installed. One GB is definitely not enough for serious work, and the upgrade process is bad enough to avoid altogether if you can.
6 Responses to “Two Gingabytes”
Sorry, comments are closed for this article.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:14 AM
Woot woot. I still remember when I got my first Athlon – Windows PC that had 1GB of RAM. Ran around the house singing “Gig gig gig, gig gig o’ ram…” to the tune of “Barbara Ann.” Good times.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:36 PM
LOL oh the joy of getting more gingabytes. It brings such warmth and happiness to a computer (and the person using it).
January 23rd, 2007 at 01:22 PM
Woot woot!! 2gigs makes a world of difference (at least from 512mb it does). With Apple decreasing the price on the memory upgrade from the online store (not retail store), it is easier to just have Apple take care of it. You end up spending just about the same price.
It’s definitely an adventure putting in memory inside the very compact mini. Glad you got to enjoy my pain. ;)
January 24th, 2007 at 11:04 AM
Nice…2gigs is sweet. I’m sure you going to love the preformance improvements!!! I bet getting memory in that compact tiny mini was quite an adventure.
I’m still waiting till I have the $ to upgrade my MacBook…I think I’ll do it myself and buy the RAM from someone other than Apple because you do save quite a bit more on the MacBook Ram by buying from another vendor (at least last time I checked) and the install isn’t difficult.
January 25th, 2007 at 01:25 PM
I am considering a Mac Mini for web work (programming and Flash) and wanted to see if you thought it has enough horsepower to get the job done.
January 25th, 2007 at 01:57 PM
It is if you have 2 Gingabytes! ;) Seriously though, here’s a good discussion forum that might help you decide: http://godbit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1789