How to increase the performance of my late 2012 Mac Mini?

[Boyd01]

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/everything-you-need-know-about-carbon-copy-cloner-and-apfs

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"Can CCC make a bootable backup of an APFS volume?
Yes. Both CCC 4 and CCC 5 can make bootable backups of APFS-formatted startup disks, however there is a limited amount of support for APFS in CCC 4. CCC 4 can make a bootable backup from an APFS-formatted volume to an HFS+ formatted volume, and can even create a recovery volume on that HFS+ backup disk. CCC 5 can make a bootable backup from an APFS-formatted volume to an HFS+ formatted volume or to an APFS-formatted volume."

 

[realhiphop]

Thanks everyone. I'm on High Sierra. I'll take a look at troubleshooting and getting back to you with some answers tonight.

 

[Phil in ocala]

Good advice above. SSD is the key to improving your performance.

A few approaches:

1. Tear the Mini apart and replace the HDD with a 1 TB SSD (costly, doesn't solve the capacity issue you are nearing).
2. Same, but put a 128\256\512 GB SSD in and get a data doubler kit to keep your 1TB HDD and create a Fusion Drive of 1TB +128\256\512GB.
3. SSHD. Seagate Firecuda for instance is a 2.5" 2TB hybrid drive, not as fast as SSD, but considerably faster than HDD.
4. External boot drive on USB3. Here too, SSD will be fastest, SSHD is also going to be better than current HDD. If RAID is desired, OWC has USB3 Drive Enclosures with slots for 2-4 HDD\SSD\SSHD drives that can mirror (RAID1), or RAID5 (3+ drives).

If replacing internal drive, choices are to clone the current drive to the new drive before replacing (use Carbon Copy Cloner or similar), or install fresh OS to the new drive(s) and restore from Time Machine (effective but slower). In both cases, prepare the new drive while externally connected (USB adapter comes with many kits), then do the physical replacement. If you go route 1 or 3, you can keep the 1TB drive in a USB adapter for additional external storage.

If you go the Fusion route, it will destroy all data on the existing disk, so make sure you have a good TM backup.

Same for external drive, clone to the new drive, or install fresh and restore TM to the new drive. In this case, after preparing the external SSD\SSHD, reformat the internal drive and use it for extra storage.

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I have the same unit...but opening up the unit and replacing the internal...is NOT worth the risk of screwing up the computer..Its not like changing spark plugs and wires.

 

[realhiphop]

It's working now! Do you guys suggest that I wipe the internal HDD to use for another hard drive? Is there any reason to keep that as a clone of the USB SSD?

 

[Boyd01]

I setup a mini with an external 500gb ssd and configured time machine to back it up to the internal hard disk. You could also use CCC to do a nightly clone to the internal hard drive.

 

[Trusteft]

It's working now! Do you guys suggest that I wipe the internal HDD to use for another hard drive? Is there any reason to keep that as a clone of the USB SSD?

You can store it as use it in case something goes horrible horrible wrong with the current drive. But in that case, you might as well have a time machine backup.
In a similar situation I just store the old drives in cases, in case I need them.

 

[admwright]

It's working now! Do you guys suggest that I wipe the internal HDD to use for another hard drive? Is there any reason to keep that as a clone of the USB SSD?

I just did the 'open heart surgery' on our mini 2012 at the weekend - quite straight forward with the iFixit guide. Put in a SSD along side the sloooow internal. My plan is to setup a cron task to rsync the new boot SSD to the old HD for a bootable backup.

What I cannot believe is the difference is performance - how on earth can Apple cripple their own hardware with their own operating system!? Before the SSD update finder would take 20-30 seconds before showing the icons in the window, now it is almost instantaneous. Same for Safari, would be 10-20 seconds before I could type in a web address, now about 1 second.

 

[Trusteft]

I just did the 'open heart surgery' on our mini 2012 at the weekend - quite straight forward with the iFixit guide. Put in a SSD along side the sloooow internal. My plan is to setup a cron task to rsync the new boot SSD to the old HD for a bootable backup.

What I cannot believe is the difference is performance - how on earth can Apple cripple their own hardware with their own operating system!? Before the SSD update finder would take 20-30 seconds before showing the icons in the window, now it is almost instantaneous. Same for Safari, would be 10-20 seconds before I could type in a web address, now about 1 second.

That doesn't sound right. Before I upgraded to SSDs, my mechanical drive late 2012 would take no more than few seconds to run safari or show the icons in finder. The SSD certainly improved things, but it wasn't that bad before. Are you certain you didn't change anything else? Did you do a fresh installation with the SSD?

 

[admwright]

That doesn't sound right. Before I upgraded to SSDs, my mechanical drive late 2012 would take no more than few seconds to run safari or show the icons in finder. The SSD certainly improved things, but it wasn't that bad before. Are you certain you didn't change anything else? Did you do a fresh installation with the SSD?

No all I did was add the SSD and used the Disk Utility restore from the old HD to the SSD. I was shocked at the difference. I had been putting off getting the SSD as I also thought that there must be something else wrong with our mini. Admittedly the numbers I gave were not always that bad, but I would say about 50% of the time they were. Also, it was random when there would be a slow down - I would run Activity Monitor but could not see and issues from it.

 

[Trusteft]

No all I did was add the SSD and used the Disk Utility restore from the old HD to the SSD. I was shocked at the difference. I had been putting off getting the SSD as I also thought that there must be something else wrong with our mini. Admittedly the numbers I gave were not always that bad, but I would say about 50% of the time they were. Also, it was random when there would be a slow down - I would run Activity Monitor but could not see and issues from it.

I believe you, I just don't think that's normal.