Your experience & thoughts on SSDs for MacMini

On topic, the guys at Mach2 claim replacing the Mini's hard drive with a SSD makes a difference sonically or else they wouldn't swap the drives.

The hard drive is only used for the OS, iTunes, the other music software (like Amarra or Pure Music, or...), and other essential operating software. No music is stored on the SSD. Therefore, it doesn't have to be a large drive. The SSD drive installed in my 2010 Mini is only 40G.

Whether or not the cost is worthwhile in your 2007-2008 Mini is up to you.

Ed,

I couldn't imagine life without SSD's. They are so much quicker and quieter than mechanical drives. My desktop machine boots in 14 seconds before I'm on the internet. My laptop takes 20 seconds to do the same. I have 6 computers here and they are all running SSD's.

The drives that failed were all due to a bug with S3 sleep. It took almost a year before the manufacturer of the controller chip recognized that there was a problem. A firmware update to fix the problem should be out any day now. What's spooky is that they all failed within a few days of the four month mark. It was just an annoyance because I backup religiously and can do a clean install and turn around my machine in 2-3 hours.

Yes, SSD's do make a difference with sound quality. I imagine this is because of the speed of them and the operating system having to work less/faster to buffer data.

On another note, my music server is based an a FitPC2 which fits in the palm of my hand. It boots from an SSD and the music is kept on two external 2.5" drives. It runs 24/7 and I update it like once every 6 months. At idle it draws 4 watts; under load never more than 11 watts. It's 100% silent and air cooled. I have five squeezeboxes and multiple computer that access it and it's never had a problem serving multiple streams.

Prpixel,

I thought regular HDDs did sequential (what most programs do) loadings faster than SSDs?
Do you copy the music from the external to the internal when you want to listen a song? What type of power supplies do you run, battery or Linear PS?
Cheers P

I have been enjoying Adele's latest release "21" as of late.

Ooooppps, meant to post that in the "best female vocalist thread" - my apologies.