External hard Drive for a mac Mini 2011 model.

I have the Apple unit and it works well.  From what I have read, almost any of the USB CD/DVD drives out there will work as well.  I enjoy having the CD/DVD drive because a lot of my programs were not downloadable and available only on DVDs.  Also, I save a lot of my photo files to CD, so I really appreciate the drive.  The Apple unit would be a good one for you.

The Apple drive is about $76.  You can also order a drive from Iomega and other dompanies.  These will generally be slightly cheaper and can also be run on other machines, whereas the Apple Drive is only for the MBA as far as I know.

Marv

He's talking about the external SuperDrive for the MacBook Air.  It burns to CD or DVD.  It's a nice unit, but you do have to swap DVDs in and out.

A simple, external USB hard drive wouldn't cost very much and would give you lots of back up space.  You could also use it to run Time Machine.  These drives are pretty cheap these days and as long as you stay with one of the major brands, I think you're OK.  Plug in and nothing to swap.

I did misunderstand.  A good HDD is really easy to find as almost any of them on the market will do a good job for you.  The most important thing is to get one that is large enough to hold all your current and future files.  LaCie and Iomega make some really good one as does Toshiba.

Both are good drives, but the W/D gets more nods than Seagate.  Personally, I don't think there's that much difference between name brand HDD.

WD is fine.  I have two sitting on my desk right now, and they replaced (upgraded) two older ones. 

Does you Mac mini have FireWire 800?  Thunderbolt?

I ask because these are fast, but they cost.  I had FW800 drives but replaced them with Thunderbolt because of transfer times being much faster.  But then, I work with video and the means files are huge.  Cutting transfer times in half was well worth the added cost.  This might not be true for you.

USB is fine for most tasks.  It's cheap.

If you have a lot of stuff to move, you might want to consider FW800 or FW400 but the external drive will cost a little more.  

I see you had to wait a week before somebody replied.  I have a question up and very few people seem to even be looking at it.  Hmm.

I am looking at http://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-Technology-MiniStation-HD-PCT1TU3-BB/dp/B004J6JUSY/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1341326498&sr=8-8&keywords=external+ssd and http://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-Technology-MiniStation-Protection-HD-PNT1-0U3B/dp/B005EJLFVK/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1341326498&sr=8-10&keywords=external+ssd they are HDDs not SSDs, though.

The 2011 mini has a Thunderbolt connector, four USB2 ports, and a FW800.

Because Thunderbolt is so up-and-coming, the temptation is to go with that for the purpose of future usability. However, Thunderbolt eternal drives remain prohibitively expensive on a per GB value basis. For example, the WD MyBook 4TB with Thunderbolt, is $550 when you include the $50 cable.

FW800 used to be my go-to connector when I was editing a lot of video and it was the standard in that industry. But those days are slipping behind us quickly.

Finally, USB2 is the slowest connector there, but it has the virtue of bing able to connect USB3 external drives, which are much cheaper than Thunderbolt drives. Because the new MacBook Pros and Airs support USB3 in addition to Thunderbolt, it's reasonable to assume that future minis will support USB3.

Therefore, for the next year or so, USB3 would seem to me to be the best solution for your external storage needs. You will be able to use the drive case with your next Mac or PC, and it's backward compatible with USB2.

Here's what i would purchase:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VFJ9MK

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003UI62AG

Good luck, and let us know how it works out for you!

Quote:

Originally Posted by chipz 

I save a lot of my photo files to CD

I hope you are aware that your burned CDs and DVDs will start losing recorded bits - information - from Day One, and become completely unreadable after a few years.

So don't use CDs and DVDs for backup purposes!

Burned CDs and DVDs are only good for short-term storage (less than 1 year).

The HDD is the way to go for backups.  CDs and DVDs do lose their info over time.  I have used them in the past to ave photos and thus far I've been lucky.  I have some photos I saved to CD over 11 years ago and they are still readable.  I don't know how much longer they will remain readable so I have transferred my photo files to a HDD.  I have also transferred some photo files to the Mobile Fidelity Gold CDs which are said to last over 100 years as compared to the 10 to 15 years of the standard CD.  I am "abusing" the gold CDs to ee how they  retain their data and so far they seem to be doing quite well.  Even so, I agree that HDD is the better way to save these files.  Just get a good quality HDD and you should be fine.

If you want to see just how fast your Mini can be (I have the same model); you can always go and get yourself a 180GB Intel SSD with SATAIII interface, in addition to a Buffalo external 500GB classical HD built in. You then swap that HD with the SSD and you won't ever go back to anything else. Example - a complete clone of the drive using SuperDuper for ~100GB takes 16 minutes to complete, startup until login screen a mere 15 seconds. Definitely the way to go, but expensive. I think I got the SSD for $160, and paid another $170 for the Buffalo drive. If you can't fork over that much money, go with a FW800 one, never buy outdated USB drives, they are just too slow.

Just my 2 cents worth,

Sascha