I just purchased a Mac mini and the seller assures me that there are two 1 TB hard drives inside, with a total storage space of 2 TB (picture from the listing).
At first, I was under the impression that there was a second drive without an OS and that the partitioning was done on that (Windows-format?) drive. However, after erasing the accessible drive following Apple's instructions, and restoring my data with Target mode, I do not see a second drive listed anywhere:
- If I start the computer pressing
ALTI see
this. - In the Storage tab I see
this. - In Recovery mode the Disk
Utility lists this. - The
diskutil listcommand returns this in
Recovery mode (more images).
I really, really don't want to have to go through this process to figure out if the seller is saying the truth about there being two drives inside, since it might prevent me from returning it, but I'd like to know if what I bought matches the item description.
Possible hypotheses:
- there is no second drive
- there might be a second drive, but badly connected/wired in so undetectable
- there is a second drive that is blank / oddly formatted / undetectable
How can I know if there is a second drive in the Mac mini?
Best Answer
Possibilities are:
You can find out which it is by simply opening the black plastic bottom and looking, no "process" required.
In the picture of what you will see when opening the back, I have indicated the two connectors for the two possible disks with red arrows. One will already be occupied by the disk we know is in the Mac mini. If the other one is also occupied, then it is the second alternative: there is a disk but it is faulty or the connection is faulty. If it is unoccupied there is no second disk inside.