Mac Mini: HD or RAM?

I work with pro audio in Logic Pro and I need a little more performance out of my Mini. I am however on a budget so I can only upgrade one or the other, the harddrive or RAM.

I've got the current gen model with the 2.25 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB DDR3.

I want to either upgrade to 4 GB of RAM from Crucial or this harddrive.

Any thoughts?

Sounds like its the ram you want.

Clay

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As first phase of upgrades, I'd upgrade its RAM. Some say going from 2 to 4 Gig Ram upgrade is worth it. For next upgrade phase, I would upgrade its internal HD size. I would then purchase an HD case and remove its existing internal HD and make it an external connected USB external backup HD. Using included Time Machine, this smaller size external HD would be used to backup my most critical data.

Also.... Installing more RAM also means less memory paging. Less paging to HD means less time consuption for the apps - that love chewing on lots of memory. Thus, win-win on both fronts.

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Thank you all for your help, looks like I'll be going with the RAM for those beastly virtual instruments! Luckily Logic Pro just got full 64-bit mode too!

Also, Spike, do you post on FutureProducers as well? I swear someone there has a very similar username.

I agree with the others...RAM will almost always get you better performance. Both of our Mini's have 4GB of RAM and do quite well under heavy lifting.

BTW, if you eventually want to go with a larger/faster hard drive you might want to consider using an external 3.5" 7200RPM drive connected via FireWire 800. My wife has one Mac Mini and the second one acts as a home media server. I upgraded the wife's mini with a 500GB, 7200RPM (WD Black) internal drive. It does fine but runs a little too hot for my taste under load. Based on that I took some advice from someone else here and connected an external 1TB 7200RPM hard drive (Hitachi 31000 inside a MiniStack 3 enclosure). The Mini boots off of the external drive now (I used SuperDuper to clone the internal drive). It's as fast or faster than the wife's and the Mini and external enclosure barely ever get more than warm. I know that's a ways in your future, but something to consider when the time comes.

Happy upgrading!