Then open system preferences>Users and Groups, unlock the padlock if locked, right click over the primary account and choose Advanced.

When you get your enclosure from OWC and the 1TB SATA SSD drive fitted inside and it's connected up to the mini you will start by turning on the Mac and logging in to the secondary user account. I recommend creating a two user accounts on the new mini, a secondary admin account and a primary one with exact same legacy username and password you always used on the 2012 mini. You will need to simply login to your legacy account. On connecting your previous home folder to the new mac, I recommend the following procedure and you are ready to rumble.

OWC Mercury On-The-Go or OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini You wanted a thunderbolt enclosure but OWC doesn't sell them for 2.5' SATA drives so you will need to go with one of two USB enclosures. So the Mac mini 2012 only used 2.5' SATA drives. If you don't know which one is compatible with your 1TB SSD contact OWC via chat and they should be able to recommend the right one.

Even if you ONLY have USB2 interfaces, but much better if you have USB3 ports (making sure your USB3 devices have quality enclosures and quality USB3 cables as poor quality USB3 cases and cables may generate WiFi interferences).Ĭongrats on choosing one of the new minis, I didn't know the SSD was soldered to the MOBO, darn Apple.Īnyway, visit the ' My Upgrades' section of OWC and then under Desktops category choose your new mac mini. You will need an SSD enclosure for the 1TB SSD. If that drive is a rotating hard disk, then using an external SSD will most likely be faster. If for your original question about a 150GB drive. If there is a home folder sub-folder that is not controlled by one of the apps, but has a large amount of storage in it, then move the files to an external device, and then Google creating a Symbolic Link (aka symlink) from your home folder to the external device. You can find articles via Google on how to move those libraries to an external drive and then tell the related app how to use those external libraries. Then assuming pictures, music, videos are the really big files, use the associated app to specify that your libraries are on the external storage. Assuming we are talking about the new Mac mini, this I would put the operating system on the internal storage, as it will most likely be the fastest storage and the operating system as well as your vanilla home folder should not take up too much space.

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