My Mini hung and then wouldn't re-boot (kept hanging on start-up). I booted off the install/restore CD, ran Disk Utility, it told me that my internal hard drive (a 120GB BTO job) was damaged. I repaired it (with Disk Utility) and fixed the permissions as well. It rebooted and ran fine afterwards.

Should I be worried? I have never experienced a Mac disk drive failure before. All this follows on the heels of a number of EyeTV caused crashes. (My EyeTV recordings go to an external drive). I do have most things that are on my internal HD backed up, but an outright failure would mean losing the Mini while Apple Care services it.

Unfortunately, I never thought of configuring one of my external disks to be a boot disk. It is too late now -- to boot an Intel Mac they would need to re-partitioned and I don't have spare 750GB gathering dust to house the data from one of them.

My advice, if you don't have a duplicate boot drive, the next time you buy and external drive, make it a boot drive first and then you can start using it for data.

The Mac Mini uses laptop hard disks. Mine died in less than a year of being on almost all the time as a PVR. My local Apple store recommended that I keep the "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" check box on the Energy Saver system preferences pane checked.

I'm on some support lists for people who run Mini's as servers, and everyone recommends using an "enterprise" class 2 1/2" drive. One of the more popular ones is the Hitachi E7K100 (7200 rpm drive) line of drives. The enterprise class drives are designed to be on 24/7 and in constant use. I recently put one of these in my MacBook, and have been very pleased. A 100 GB drive ran me $95. For $125 you can buy one of these drives and a case, so you can pop the old internal into it and use it for backup or transport. Not a bad deal for a little peace of mind and flexibility.

I have never experienced a Mac disk drive failure before.

There's no such thing as a Mac disk drive failure. There are drive failures, period. Any drive type, 2.5 or 3.5, PATA or SATA, enterprise class or not, by any manufacturer, can and do fail. That's why on every thread we have here about external storage, we also almost always talk about backup and the need for bootable clones. Fortunately for you, Ted, you've had a scare but haven't lost anything. Now just get yourself set up with a bootable clone and you'll be all set.

Like wildrock already mentioned, one good way to do this, if you upgrade the laptop drive in a mini or Macbook, is to just stick the old one in a bus-powered enclosure and dedicate it as a bootable clone. I carry one around with me when I travel so if there's ever a problem I can boot off the external.

Good thing about Intel Macs being able to boot off of USB, because good USB enclosures are inexpensive (unlike firewire enclosures.) Hot swappable drive trays have appeal for this as well in an HT context--you can keep bootable clones of all your Macs on different partitions of a single 3.5" drive--swap that in to clone the Mac connected to your HTPC, boot off it if need be, then remove it and put it away for safe keeping.

Once my iTunes library got over 200GB I decided I had to have a copy of that as well, so that's cloned onto a separate drive, which is removed as well.

Time machine should help with this in the future as well.

There is a school of thought that says drives are happier when spinning all the time, and that putting them to sleep, turning them off and on, can lead to premature failure. When I had a mini, I booted it off a 3.5" firewire external because I felt it was zippier all around that way, but I let it go to sleep. I put a bigger, better 2.5" SATA into a Macbook, which I now use in place of the mini, and I let it sleep about 20 hours per day. I tend to let all my other drives spin down as well.

I use SuperDuper to manage all our bootable clones, by the way.

I'm on some support lists for people who run Mini's as servers, and everyone recommends using an "enterprise" class 2 1/2" drive.
I would certainly do that once my AppleCare expires.

There's no such thing as a Mac disk drive failure. There are drive failures, period.
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Good thing about Intel Macs being able to boot off of USB, because good USB enclosures are inexpensive (unlike firewire enclosures.)
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Once my iTunes library got over 200GB I decided I had to have a copy of that as well, so that's cloned onto a separate drive, which is removed as well.
Oh, I agree, absolutely, and having swapped countless dead disk drives at work, I am under no delusions.

I certainly have backed up my 500GB iTunes library twice, with one of the backups off site. Some of my EyeTV recordings are backed up as well, although I am fully prepared to lose them -- it is just not practical to back them up.

As for USB, I'm staying away, because USB drives don't spin down when you put the Mac to sleep, which for me is a fatal flaw. Also, USB 2.0 is noticeably slower than FW400, at least in a Mac environment.

Also, USB 2.0 is noticeably slower than FW400, at least in a Mac environment.That it is. I just got an external 2 1/2" case that has USB and eSATA. It really screams on the Macs that have eSATA pci cards.

As for USB, I'm staying away, because USB drives don't spin down when you put the Mac to sleep, which for me is a fatal flaw.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

I have my original Macbook 2.5" SATA as a bootable clone in an eSATA/USB enclosure that when connected to the Macbook sleeps just fine when I sleep the Macbook, wakes just fine when I wake the Macbook. I don't ever use it that way, the clone is simply available for insurance. Cost of enclosure $16 (and that's with eSATA as well. An Intel Mac can boot reliably from a leftover drive in an external enclosure which costs $6.) My other 2.5" firewire enclosure (for SATA drives) cost me $90 (granted it has the Oxford 924.)

Also, two other comments:

1) there can be a benefit to having a USB external if you ever have to move information to and from a work PC, for instance, to your Mac. Most PCs in business or government don't have firewire and sometimes a thumb drive just isn't big enough;

2) there are firewire drives out there which don't spin down and wake as reliably as you'd like when you put a Mac to sleep. All firewire externals are not created equal.

Also, USB 2.0 is noticeably slower than FW400, at least in a Mac environment.

Yes, and no. And realize I love firewire before reading on.

What I mean by that is whether you notice it depends on what you're doing--in real world terms a large Apple lossless collection maintained via USB performs flawlessly, a video_ts file ripped to and played back from a USB external is identical to one ripped to or played back via firewire. Have you ever played back one of your high def EyeTV recordings over USB, Ted? Do it sometime just for a test. You might be surprised. Moving files back and forth, yes, that's where you'll notice a difference between USB and firewire--but if you plan to do a lot of that, even that is surmountable, especially if you have all your Macs wired up via gigabit. A large file moved from an external USB enclosure on one Mac over gigabit to another Mac (or storage attached to that Mac) is much faster than a direct FW400 connection speed.

eSATA is the future, it's just too bad Apple dropped the ball with further firewire development and has lagged so far behind in making it easier to connect Macs to SATA externals.

OK, but from what you are saying the advantage of USB over FireWire, is strictly price -- and I am willing to pay a couple of extra bucks for Firewire (all my OWC FW drives spin down on sleep without fail).

The work thing doesn't apply as I keep an old PowerBook in the office.