01-05-2013, 12:37 PM
Okay, the Late 2012 Mac mini 2.3GHz i7...
The internal SATA bus is 6Gb/s while USB 3.0 is 5Gb/s. So a 6G SSD running internally is going to move most data at about 570-580MB/s, via USB 3.0 at around 480MB/s. Hal's figure of 80MB/s would be just about right for a spinning hard drive.
You need to look at the least common denominator here. Is it the bus, or is it the drive.
I would go with a small SSD as the boot and applications drive and let the User folder reside on the hard drive. This is what I have done with my Mac mini 3,1 and it is incredibly fast!
The internal SATA bus is 6Gb/s while USB 3.0 is 5Gb/s. So a 6G SSD running internally is going to move most data at about 570-580MB/s, via USB 3.0 at around 480MB/s. Hal's figure of 80MB/s would be just about right for a spinning hard drive.
You need to look at the least common denominator here. Is it the bus, or is it the drive.
I would go with a small SSD as the boot and applications drive and let the User folder reside on the hard drive. This is what I have done with my Mac mini 3,1 and it is incredibly fast!