Mac mini 2006 - 2009 > Internal Hard Drives

The Mac mini moved to the new Intel CPU in 2006, replacing the previous Mac mini G4. The design stayed largely the same, with just some changes to the ports. After an update in 2007, there was no refresh until 2009 (a long gap at the time), and the 2009 model is a big change with a move to a maximum of 8GB of DDR3 RAM vs 3GB of DDR2 and the drive controller being upgraded to SATA 300 from SATA 150 (making an SSD upgrade much more useful). This gave the 2009 a much longer lifespan as a truly useful machine, and they still appear occasionally into the 2020s.

We wouldn't recommend upgrading 2006 or 2007 models these days. And even the 2009 is clearly showing its age, but we do have RAM and SSDs available - if you can deal with the operating system not being able to be upgraded beyond OS X 10.11 El Capitan, they can still be functional machines after an inexpensive upgrade.

The 2006 model maxes out an OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the 2007 at OS X 10.7 Lion, and the 2009 at OS X 10.11 El Capitan.