My 2012 Mac Mini is extremely slow on macOS Catalina

[freebrian]

I have a Mac Mini Late 2012 2.5Ghz, 4GB Ram, 500mb HD (all the stuff it came with)

It was running okay on High Sierra. Some apps, such as Logic Pro X, couldn't quite muster the strength to do everything I wanted, but at least beachballs were rare in most programs I used. I was eventually coaxed into upgrading because compatibility issues with old browsers that wanted to update. For example, Firefox updated and I experienced microphone problems after that (which did not occur in Firefox before, and did not occur in Chrome).

The I upgraded to Catalina. It is incredibly slow. Every thing, literally, is so much slower, I can't believe. From the time I turn the computer to the time I can open even one app has gotta be at least 5 minutes. When I searched online and saw some people moaning about 90 second boot times I felt like, omg 90 seconds sounds great right now. And even after the computer has been on for hours and has had time to get its bearings, still have beachballs all the time. Transferring files to external USB devices slowed down. The internet slowed down. Even when the screen saver came on the animation was stuttering like it couldn't handle the animation smoothly.

I installed new RAM - so now there is 16 GB of ram instead of 4 but I'm still not noticing a difference. I ran disk utility to check the drive health - everything is fine. I got rid of clutter - I have over 120 GB free space on my hard drive. I decided to turn off FileVault and let the drive decrypt - my computer has been on all day and it is still decrypting. It must be taking over 8 hours. I don't even have a bunch of movies on my drive or anything like that. It's mostly music and sample libraries for music production. I am trying to transfer files to a USB flash drive - 30 GB is taking several hours.

I never experienced this kind of slowness on High Sierra. I was annoyed with High Sierra, but my annoyance has turned to rage with Catalina. I feel like Apple should warn users - yes your Mac Mini can handle this OS but probably not unless you do some serious hardware upgrades first.

My next steps will be to backup all my files and reinstall macOS. I thought I was going to try Mojave but I think I will go back to High Sierra because people are saying Mojave and Catalina are somewhat similar and I want none of that! I am going to install an SSD anyway but I'm shook at how bad Catalina was for me, I think my old Mac just doesn't like it.

 

[rm5]

A few things:

1. That's an incredibly old computer, so you can't expect it to run super fast in the first place. I had one back in the day, so I know the feeling there.
2. Again, I used to have one of those exact machines, and the stock Hitachi HDD is almost unusably slow. Catalina only makes things worse, because of the filesystem change (High Sierra used JHFS, while Catalina uses APFS).
3. Good you have 16 GB of RAM finally, but the hard drive is what's making the machine really unusable.

Your solution I'm afraid is not to reinstall macOS—that's not going to do much. Your solution is to either get an SSD for the machine (replacing the hard drive is relatively easy), or just get a new computer altogether. Catalina also isn't receiving security updates anymore (that stopped last year).

 

[DeltaMac]

I have two of those 2012 minis. One that I still use daily. Some will say that you can simply transfer your system to an external USB SSD. Yes, that works fine, but the best upgrade is to replace the spinning hard drive with an SATA SSD.
Yes, the SSD will make that much difference.
I have Ventura installed as my normal boot system (installed using OCLP, which works for me without problems), and waiting for release of Sonoma 14.2 to upgrade again.

 

[Juicy Box]

APFS is horrible on HDDs, and this seemed to have gotten worse with Catalina. IIRC, APFS was around with High Sierra, but the default for HDDs was HFS, but starting with Mojave, when upgrading from High Sierra or a newer OS, the drive would automatically be converted to APFS.

Combined the APFS with a HDD that is probably 10 years old, it is no wonder that Catalina is running bad.

Using a SSD would probably make a huge difference. I still use many old Macs around similar years as your MM, and using a SSD for the boot drive is a must for myself. Night and day difference.

SATA SSDs are really cheap. You can double your storage, get a 1TB SATA SSD for less than $50, and it will fly compared to your aging HDD.

Either install it, or get a USB3/SATA adapter cable or USB3 enclosure.

Either way, I recommend using it externally first to set up, migrate your data, and make sure it works okay. Then either continue using it externally, or install it internally.

Internal is better, it will be faster and have TRIM support (you have to enable it, though. Super easy in terminal.)

Here is a 1TB SATA SSD from Best Buy, priced at $49.99:

Crucial BX500 1TB Internal SSD SATA CT1000BX500SSD1 - Best Buy

Shop Crucial BX500 1TB Internal SSD SATA at Best Buy. Find low everyday prices and buy online for delivery or in-store pick-up. Price Match Guarantee.

www.bestbuy.com

It is on sale, but there are other ones that the non-sale price is $49.

If you really don't need 1TB, you can get a 500GB for less than $29 at Best Buy.

I usually get my SSDs from New Egg, they are almost always cheaper for me.

I like this USB3/SATA adapter purchased a few of them over the years. It is cheap, works great, and has a longer cord than other ones I have used in the past, priced at $12:

SABRENT SATA to USB Cable - USB 3.0 to 2.5” SATA I/II/III Hard Drive Adapter - External Converter for SSD/HDD Data Transfer (EC-SSHD)

Product Description:Take advantage of the lightening speed of USB 3.0 to quickly transfer files up to 5 Gbps! Connect any 2.5'' Serial ATA (SATA) / SSD or SATA II Hard Drive to your computer through an available USB 3.0 port on your desktop or laptop. Reverse compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1, this...

www.amazon.com

 

[freebrian]

Thanks guys for writing back to me! Now I am worried that if I try to reinstall High Sierra on the drive, it's going to still be APFS. Does anyone know?

Maybe I need to speak with someone who successfully downgraded to High Sierra to see whether they disk format changes back from APFS (i cant remember what it was before but maybe HFS).

I already have a Kingston SSD on the way that I ordered. But its so frustrating that my situation demanded this inorganically. Me just minding my own business using a computer that was okay for my daily needs did not cause the computer to stop functioning as it should. Catalina did. Had I just continued doing what I was doing without ever trying to upgrade to Catalina, my computer still would have been okay. It was not the natural aging of my hard drive which caused the problem. It's lack of compatability with the new OS. The difference is like night and day pre and post upgrade. That is what is so frustrating, because it's like a honeypot attracting you to upgrade your computer (for free) and then you realize you fell into a trap and weren't expecting to pay money to fix it. I don't have a job I haven't worked in 6 years cuz I'm disabled. So I don't love pop-up expense surprises!

 

[Heindijs]

Thanks guys for writing back to me! Now I am worried that if I try to reinstall High Sierra on the drive, it's going to still be APFS. Does anyone know?

Maybe I need to speak with someone who successfully downgraded to High Sierra to see whether they disk format changes back from APFS (i cant remember what it was before but maybe HFS).

I already have a Kingston SSD on the way that I ordered. But its so frustrating that my situation demanded this inorganically. Me just minding my own business using a computer that was okay for my daily needs did not cause the computer to stop functioning as it should. Catalina did. Had I just continued doing what I was doing without ever trying to upgrade to Catalina, my computer still would have been okay. It was not the natural aging of my hard drive which caused the problem. It's lack of compatability with the new OS. The difference is like night and day pre and post upgrade. That is what is so frustrating, because it's like a honeypot attracting you to upgrade your computer (for free) and then you realize you fell into a trap and weren't expecting to pay money to fix it. I don't have a job I haven't worked in 6 years cuz I'm disabled. So I don't love pop-up expense surprises!

Mine has an SSD and when I used to run Monterey it didn't feel any slower than Catalina, which flies with an SSD. No reason to go back to High Sierra when there's an SSD on the way. You could totally install the latest version of macOS (Sonoma) with Opencore Legacy Patcher and it'll run perfectly fine.

Granted mine is a quad core i7 and yours is probably a dual core i5 but it should still run pretty well

 

[freebrian]

Mine has an SSD and when I used to run Monterey it didn't feel any slower than Catalina, which flies with an SSD. No reason to go back to High Sierra when there's an SSD on the way. You could totally install the latest version of macOS (Sonoma) with Opencore Legacy Patcher and it'll run perfectly fine.

Granted mine is a quad core i7 and yours is probably a dual core i5 but it should still run pretty well

Yeah its a dual core i5.

I noticed you even have a 2009 Mac Mini?! That still works too?

So about the SSD upgrade. I'm pretty nervous. I think I'm taking it to a computer service guy because I don't think I can install it myself. Did you install yours yourself?

 

[Heindijs]

I noticed you even have a 2009 Mac Mini?! That still works too?

I does work, and it even ran Catalina for a while with a patcher, but I wouldn't call it fast. The difference between the 2009 mini and a 2012 model is night and day.

So about the SSD upgrade. I'm pretty nervous. I think I'm taking it to a computer service guy because I don't think I can install it myself. Did you install yours yourself?

I did install it myself. I'd recommend following an iFixit guide for it, but do read the comments at every step because these guides tend to have you disassemble way more than needed
It's not terribly difficult but if your worried about damaging something taking it to a service person is your safest bet.

 

[fricotin]

That's what I use and it runs just fine with 16G RAM and 1T Fusion drive.

 

[Furka]

I also have a 2012 mini with an i5 2.5Mhz and 16Gb of Ram, running on a Kingston 500Gb SSD. It runs Ventura without any problems (a little sluggish in graphic changes like Mission Control, but the rest is ok if you do not use it as a Professional Video Editor). I plan to downgrade it to Monterey, to gain a little of performance and stay with the classic System Preferences (not the iOs like that has come with Ventura). The problem with this machine is only the HD. Upgrade it with a SSD and you will have the minimum requirements to stay with Monterey/Mojave with an OCLP installation.

 

[momskirbyok]

Old thread, but upgrading your HDD to a SDD will solve this. I have a dual-core i5 2012 Mac mini with 500GB SSD and 16GB RAM, and it handles Sonoma pretty well! Much better than my macOS High Sierra VM on my ESXi Host

 

[oddfodder]

I know this is an old thread, but it's close enough to my problem that I thought someone might have a solution:

My second computer is a late 2012 Mac Mini, 500 GB internal HD, 16 GB RAM. It is running Catalina.
I only use this for streaming the internet with my kids, nothing else at all is important to me to run on this computer. I have NordVPN installed.
When I run a speed test (firefox) without connecting through the VPN, I get 250 MBps download, 40 Mbps upload, which is exactly what I pay for from my ISP. When I run the test connected through the VPN, I only get 90-100 download, upload still good at 40.
Through chrome, I get the same 90-100 download whether connected to the VPN or not.
So I tried to stream unconnected through FF and the weird thing is, streaming isn't better on FF without the VPN connected, it still gets stuck a lot and has to be reloaded to continue. This might happen 5 times in a half hour show. I would say it makes no difference whether on chrome or FF, connected to the VPN or not, the streaming is still bad.
As an aside, my newer late 2019 mac mini uses the same VPN, same browsers and has no issues at all.

I'm wondering if it's the computer itself and if there's any fix. Since I don't care about anything that's on there (just some old family pix and music videos), I could delete all files, or simply reset the computer to factory settings, might that help?
Or reading what's above, getting an SSD HD (even 250 GB would be enough, maybe external)? In that case, I'm not sure what to then do, I assume I could set it up to boot from there?
Or any other thoughts/advice? Any and all help is very much appreciated!

Thanks in advance.