If your SATA drive is NTFS formatted, the Mac Mini can read from it but can't write to it by default unless you have a 3rd party NTFS driver installed. Please bewared.
best mac mini option for external music drive?
After playing with PC based music servers for about 18 months, I'm thinking of tossing in the towel and buying a Mac mini; basically I think PC hardware architecture has a core conflict between audio and network, as disabling network always improves audio. I have my music on a 1TB SATA drive which I'd like to attach to the Mac. I plan on using an SSD drive for the OS. What's the best option for local Mac hard drive connection?