Mac mini [A1176] SSD in PCIe slot?

Question

I have made some modifications to an old mac mini i picked up. I’ve omitted the optical drive and have two 750GB WD drives installed, maxed the RAM and upgraded the CPU for a core2duo.

Now I’d like to remove the airport card from the PCIe slot on the logic board and install an SSD card: Intel Solid-State Drive 310 Series

My questions are:

• Will OS X recognise this drive in the PCIe slot?
• Will it be bootable so I can load the OS?
• What data transfer speed is possible?
• Did Apple use a standard PCIe?

The plan is to load the OS on to the SSD and have the two 750’s in a RAID 1 configuration as a media array. I don’t need bluetooth or wireless.

Will this work?

Answer 1

Looks like it is a standard mini-PCIe slot, though more recent minis don't have them. I found an article about someone successfully installing a SATA controller in their slot, which certainly sounds positive for your proposal. Sorry I can't be more definitive, but there probably aren't many people doing this! I have a SATA OCZ Vertex2 in my 2009 mini, and it flies.