Chosen Solution
My mac mini which I run as a server for various things had its power supply die, so I purchased a second hand 2012 Mac Mini and placed the (dead) 2011 Mac Mini’s SSD into that one. All is well on that end. I have ordered a power supply and will perform the repair on the 2011 Mac Mini. But now my Mac Mini is without a drive of any kind. So I am wondering if it would be (relatively) painless if I merely took the SATA SSD (Samsung 860 EVO running macOS 10.13.6) out of my 2010 MBP and placed it in my 2011 Mac Mini. Are there any gotcha’s I should be aware of? EDIT: Added details regarding model of SSD and version of macOS.
The 2010 MacBook Pro’s only supported SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) drives, Your 2011 Mac Mini supports SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) drives. So while the slower older drive will work in the newer system, it won’t offer the full ability of what the system could offer. The second issue is the OS-X/macOS your MacBook Pro’s drive is running may not be able to boot the newer Mac Mini, so before you move things about make sure your MacBook Pro has at least OS-X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
