I was looking into upgrading my 2006 Mac Mini (serving as a media server) with a 2010 model, just to get a bigger hard drive... and also a faster one!

Now, according to this guy, the Mac Mini 2010 still comes with a stinky slow old SATA-1 drive, just as back in the days. And that Ricky guy actually sounds like he knows damn well what he's talking about!

Anyone got a Mac Mini 2010? Care to check the Negotiated Link Speed in your System Profiler? (About my mac > More info...)

On the screenshot above, you can see a Negatiated Link Speed of 3 Gb/s, which is good... except I made the capture on my Mac Pro. Apparently, 2010 Mac Minis will show you a Link Speed of 3 Gb/s (that's what the Mac is capable of) but a Negotiated Link Speed of only 1.5 Gb/s (that's what the HD is capable of)...

What Ricky doesn't say though, is if he has the 320 GB drive or the 500 GB drive. There may be a difference between these two.

Now, the alternative would be to upgrade the drive myself, but it's just a big bag of hurt! I'm too old to get any pleasure out of disasenbling hardware any more...

I had a Youtube Video here, but the author made it private :'(

November 2010 Update: I went to the Apple store and checked out the Mac Mini Server version: it has 7200 rpm drives but still at 1,5 Gbps. I also checked a MacBook Air for comparison: it has an SSD drive and it actually communicates at 3 Gbps.

August 2011 Update: I went back to the Apple store and checked ont the Mac Mini 2011 Edition! (click to read)

Comments from long ago:

Comment from: Frank Plank

I won’t bother going in to much detail since I don’t think you’ll ever moderate your blog posts and see this, but I did the check you suggested and, indeed, the link is at 1.5Gbps with the 500GB drive. But this hard drive isn’t fast enough to saturate that, so having a link speed of 3Gbps wouldn’t have helped it.

On the upside, I hear changing the hard drive on this MacMini is much easier than in the past.

Vidia MCP89 AHCI:

Vendor: NVidia
Product: MCP89 AHCI
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

TOSHIBA MK5055GSXF:

Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)
Model: TOSHIBA MK5055GSXF
Revision: FH405B
Serial Number: 40EBF01QS
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Rotational Rate: 5400
Medium Type: Rotational
Bay Name: Lower
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
Writable: Yes
BSD Name: disk0s1
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 499.76 GB (499,763,888,128 bytes)
Available: 19.98 GB (19,979,071,488 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /

2010-11-24 21-25