02-25-2024, 04:37 PM
I know this multiple-advice thing is confusing, but see my edit above.
The lower drive is may still be good, and he’d be essentially throwing that away if he disconnected it. If it’s the 128 SSD, no big deal, but if it’s the 1TB spinny, that’d be a lot of extra room for pix, music, video, or a backup, etc.
So I’d say don’t disconnect the lower drive now; install the new 960 in the upper drive bay, and reboot in recovery mode. See if the lower drive is seen; if it is, erase it, and you either have a second (internal) drive, or put them together into a Fusion Drive (which Disk Utility used to be able to do at least).
If the lower drive is truly dead, you can still open in back up and disconnect it, if y’all think this is necessary. He’s opened the Mini once, and now he knows how- reopening will take 5 minutes.
The lower drive is may still be good, and he’d be essentially throwing that away if he disconnected it. If it’s the 128 SSD, no big deal, but if it’s the 1TB spinny, that’d be a lot of extra room for pix, music, video, or a backup, etc.
So I’d say don’t disconnect the lower drive now; install the new 960 in the upper drive bay, and reboot in recovery mode. See if the lower drive is seen; if it is, erase it, and you either have a second (internal) drive, or put them together into a Fusion Drive (which Disk Utility used to be able to do at least).
If the lower drive is truly dead, you can still open in back up and disconnect it, if y’all think this is necessary. He’s opened the Mini once, and now he knows how- reopening will take 5 minutes.