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Hi, On the late-2014 Mini, I successfully swapped the existing 1TB HDD (HGST 5K1000) with a 500GB Crucial SSD. Before I did so, I installed BigSur on the then external SSD. Only when opening the device I realized that there was a M.2 drive installed. I left it in after the swap. Everything works but the M.2 SSD seems not to be used. Partitions on it are not recognized. The device shows with it’s hardware name only in Disk Utility, with 120GB), therefore I assume that together with the HDD, it formed a Volume Group (“Fusion Drive”?) which is broken now. Can anybody confirm this? My understanding is that with the Crucial SSD, it is no longer of any use otherwise. Now my Question: is it save to remove the SSD or just reformat it as a second drive? Thanks…
The blade SSD is a custom Apple unit it is not an M.2. Here’s more on it The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs And yes the 128 GB SSD was part of the Fusion Drive config your system was originally setup with. The SSD was used as a cache drive to the HDD (not visible). Using Disk Utility you can wipe it down and set it up as a regular drive. Presently you’ve setup you’re 2.5” SSD as the boot drive (not using the blade in any way) If you reformat it you could install your OS onto it as well as your most important app. You want to leave at least 1/2 of the drive empty so your OS and Apps have room for caching, paging, virtual RAM and scratch space.
