Chosen Solution
Oversize Drives: will 12.5mm hard drives and blu-ray optical drives fit in the mid 2010 Mac Mini?
I already answered the question about the hard drive here Hard drive height, 12.5 mm or only 9.5 mm?
philip’s extremely short answer is right. apple does not support blu ray - you can’t watch them under osx - the only way to watch them on apple hardware is a windows installation (wirtual or with bootcamp)
You can watch ripped blu ray like .m2ts files using VLC or XMBC for Mac. You will not be able to play commercial blu ray from the drive itself because apple does not have license to decrypt it. Just rip on windows pc using anydvd and play the .m2ts file or convert to .mkv. m2ts files have a lot of overhead so you may want to decrease the bitrate by using handbrake or other encoding software.
Hello, I did put also an Optiarc BC-5600S Slot-in Bluray Optic Drive. Found at this adress : http://cgi.ebay.fr/SONY-BC-5600S-Blu-Ray… for less than 50$, guess what? It works perfectly! Warning: Be sure to order one without a faceplate and without a buton!!! Bye
no
Lets not worry about the why, the question is; Is it possible? The 1tb scorpio drive is 12.5 mm and the drives for the mac mini are 9.5 mm. A panasonic UJ-240 blu ray drive is 12.7mm thick.
If the Panasonic UJ-240 blu ray drive fits or if you use an external drive, you should be able to watch blu-ray drives using Boot Camp, Windows 7 and PowerDVD with blu-ray support. If the setup were in my house, I would stream Hulu, listen to music on iTunes, use XBMC, watch SD DVDs, watch ripped videos on the Mac boot and boot into Windows only if I am going to watch a Blu-Ray. The only question remaining is if the whole setup is HDCP compliant.
I’m more interested in the 12.5 scorpio… If the 1TB would fit then that is the way I would go… I find the thin laptop optical drives don’t last too long.
Can someone please answer the question without diverting the topic. Does the 1tb 12.5 mm drive work when placed in a new mac mini? Is there enough space? Does the panasonic UJ-240 work in the mac mini? Blu ray plays fine with an external on bootcamp.
I just purchased the MacMini (mid-2010) Server edition. I have the exact same question about 12.5mm 1TB drives fitting or not. it surely would be nice to up the ante on the internal space from 1TB to 2TB, albeit a drop in speed from 7200 to 5400rpm. Nonetheless, the higher data density I think will sufficiently offset the somewhat loss in rotational numbers. As for the optical drives, there is a very easy solution (at least for me). Just purchase an external model. simple. Done! Given the fact I have the server model there is no slot to accommodate the internal for one. My external Buffalo Blu-Ray drive not only handles Blu-Ray but is also backward compatible with DVDs anyway. I have it primarily for archival purposes anyway moreso then watching movies. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, you can convert / downsize Blu-Ray movies from 50GB or whatever to a more manageble, less overhead, but still very good quality, say, 8GB, .MP4, .MOV, .MKV or whatever you might like. DVDs? Just ISO them to an image file. Store the ISOs on inexpensive 500GB 2.5" drives, mount the ISOs, and voila! ready to go!! Delete the ISOs of movies you didn’t like so much and don’t ever intend to watch again. Recover storage space and the most efficient way to deal with the optical disk side of the equation. Still will like to know about them 12.5m height 1TBs though. And, more fundamentally, how difficult to remove / upgrade. Cheers, TokyoJerry Update After just posting the above, I discvoered the answer to my question: 1TB Drives will NOT fit in MacMini (mid-2010) Seems like I won’t be inserting any 1TBs any time soon with this fresh information. Actually, the easiest way to resolve storage needs or requirements is to simply attach external 2.5" / 3.5" storage cases via USB or FW. I sure wish Apple would begin to incorporate USB3 designs into their hardware. The rest of the world is on USB3 already. Then, it won’t really matter whether or not you boot / process from the inside or outside. :-) Update One way to find out is to buy and try to install. Answer will be crystal clear then. FYI….. “Any Hard-drive over 9.5mm thick will *Not Work.” This is not known for a fact until someone tests it. FYI, Apple does not support 1TBs in MacBooks. But you know what? They do fit! Nice, snug, and comfortably. So long as it’s the unibody model. Try to insert an alternate optical drive it and see if it works.
I there a reason why this thread goes from 12.5mm Optical drive space> To 12.7mm storage drive space? The Mini’s * Optical drive is 12.5mm thick. Understood. The Mini’s * Hard-Drive is 9.5mm thick. Understood. Any Hard-drive over 9.5mm thick will *Not Work. Will a 12.7mm Optical drive still fit in the Optical drive location space? .2mm is not much extra. So it would sort of make sense that a 12.7mm slim slot load drive will probably fit OK? YES/NO?
have you seen this announcement for a blu ray drive kit? http://www.amexdigital.com/Press_Release…
That’s promising in terms of Bluray deployment for Mac Mini etc. But it could be fake. But there’s even better news. As of August 2010 Hitachi will be launching a new bluray slot load drive * HYDRIVE. It will feature a built in SSD with 64GB and R/W @ 174MB x 60MB It’s the same drive the mac mini uses.Bluray / SSD drive Mac mini 2010
I’ll keep it simple and straight: Now I am running on 2010 Macmini with 750GB WD 9.5mm HDD and Optiarc BC-5600S Slot-in Bluray Optic Drive. And guess what! I did not re-install any OS on my Western (It was in 2009 Macmini) Both Leopard and Win7 x64 worked with my previous 2009 macmini installation right-away!
I put a 12.5mm 1TB HDD into my Mini, it didn’t fit properly but by breaking the small piece of plastic above the SATA connector, I was able to connect it and reattach the screws. It wouldn’t boot from the drive but a clean install did the trick.
My 5600S lasted for only 6 months. After that it can only read DVDs. Blu laser died. Replaced mine with HL-DT-ST DVDRWBD CA10N. Highly recommended.
Hi, one question for those replaced the optical drive with bluray. what happens with IR receiver? isn’t it part of the apple original optical drive? or you can mount it to the replacement blu ray drive? Many thanks
To make mac mini play blu-ray disc movie, you need the following things already: Mac mini, Blu-ray Discs, UFUSoft Mac mini Blu-ray Player, External Blu-ray drive, and then get details from the next tutorial: http://www.blu-rayvideoplayer.com/how-to…
Just upgraded my 2010 mini (MC270LLA 4,1) Superdrive to internal Blu-ray 12.7mm PANUJ265. Unit also has upgraded 16GB Ram and a Neptune 480 SSD upgrade to the 320GB hard drive. Working with evaluation version of MacGo’s Mac Blu-ray player - notice slight hitching on ‘The Martian’. This could be because of eval banner pasted over screen - not buying a player software until I see 100% smooth playback. Upgrade is difficult - mac connectors involved are very delicate.
