How to upgrade hard drive in old Mini
This is primarily a software question.
I have a late 2012 Mini, model A1347, gathering dust in the basement. It is down there, because the HDD failed years ago. But the rest of the unit still worked. I am thinking that I could replace the hard drive with an SSD, and then I would have a second Mac for some other use. A machine that old would not be my primary machine, but I am thinking I could use it as a Time Machine over wifi or even as a server.
I tried once before to remove the failed hard drive. I did not complete the task, because I did not find a video specific to my particular Mini. Apparently my Mini is the server variation, even though it came with only one hard drive. But I think that I have found a video showing how to dissemble what I have.
My question here is, "what next?" Once I get the SSD installed, then what? I have read that I have to format the drive. I know Disk Utility, but is Disk Utility stored somewhere already? After all, the new hard drive at this point is blank. Or do I have to download and reinstall the operating system? If so, how do I reinstall the OS?
I expect that I could hook up this old Mac to one of my newer Macs. I think that I could run any software from a later Mac into the new SSD. Is that how that works? Or might the restore function of the OS might be lying there somewhere, ready for use?
