NewerTech miniStack for Mac mini

[greg]

Regarding the whole heat issue; like it was mentioned you could even park them side by side. You may want to just try that for a few days and see how warm it gets. If it doesn't seem to be heating up that much then stack'em. Remember that my initial comments were based upon one night's use with a lot of disk activity involved. I'm going to continue to check the temperature of the box from time-to-time and should have a better feel for how it does over the next couple of weeks.
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2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM
miniStack 500GB
Dell 1905FP
Logitech Wave Cordless Desktop

[grandall]

I just received a bare ministack via FedEx, along with a new drive to put in it. Looks OK from the outside. I will probably attach it to my mini this evening and see how it ticks.

[blazer]

[anthonymoody]

FWIW I ordered the 400 gig version (doh!) You know what they say - go big or go home!

TM

PS - by the way, re: using a large drive as a scratch drive for video footage...do you need to have the application on one drive and the footage on the other? Is there any benefit to doing so? I ask b/c the way people refer to a 'scratch' drive sounds like it could be a drive distinct from where the app lives.

[greg]

[Susurrus]

[grandall]

[anthonymoody]

Thanks guys - that's what I figured. Well, I'll play with it as a boot drive first to see if it feels much faster. If not, I'll leave it as "only" the scratch drive.

THanks,
TM

[Susurrus]

Run some XBench benchmarks while you're at it. We've seen results when someone else did it, but it'd be interesting to see how your drive compares.
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Computer Engineer
Junior, Brown University
15" NC8430 HP Laptop
1.42Ghz PPC Mac Mini, 1Gb RAM, 1st Gen
40GB G4 iPod
2GB Black iPod Nano

[anthonymoody]

Will do. In a classic case of being penny wise I cheaped out and went for the free UPS ground shipping. It's due here on the 12th. I'll get it set up asap.

Thanks,
TM

[skoone]

Hi guys...

Mine arrived today, got it all assembled, very easy and no problems.

It works great with the mini, but perhaps I seriously missed one very important point (which was why I waited for the M9 in the first place). This one does not have any sort of "smart" power on or off feature. It just runs all the time whether the Mac Mini is on or not. I find it interesting that there is no mention in the owner's manual about this particular feature.

Anyone having any luck with the "smart" switch??

Regards,
Steve

[greg]

[skoone]

Hmmm... Interesting. My drive isn't powering down. Yep, the blue light on the front stays on after the Mini has been powered down but the drive is definitely still spinning. Something is very wrong here. Guess I'm going to have to troubleshoot this one a bit further.

The drive itself works fine with the Mini and the M9, in fact it does everything that it's supposed to except power the drive down. The hard drive is a WD 300 gig, picked it up at Sam's Club a few days ago.

Steve

[resuna]

My LaCie external drive powers down when the Mac is turned off, but my other FW case with the WD400 in it just keeps spinning. I suspect that what it's actually doing is sleeping the drive when the power goes off on the Mac mini, and not all drives sleep.

On the heat front, I'm concerned about the heat from running the drive right under the mini, because my mini at least dissipates enough heat through the bottom surface I can feel it through 1/2 inch of wood.

[FishKepr]

First notes:
I think the fan on high is a little noisy.
The USB hub does not work when the unit is powered off.
During sleep the MiniStack powers down the drive, but the fan keeps going.
Curiously, it defaulted to USB not FireWire.

The Seagate I installed occasionally makes a strange buzzing noise that seems unrelated to disk activity.