Mini stock HDD speed - disappointing

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kerplunknet said:

5400 RPM drives are worthless. 7200 RPM drives are the bare minimum I would get in any personal computer.

Although, SSDs blow everything away. There is no comparison. Pick yourself up an Intel 320 series SSD and you'll be thankful. Good luck!

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Worthless for what? For most things they're fine.

I have never had a speed issue with 5400 rpm. Apple probably chose 5400 for heat issues.

old-wiz said:

I have never had a speed issue with 5400 rpm. Apple probably chose 5400 for heat issues.

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If that's the case why do they offer the 7200RPM 750GB HD as an option ?

From what I remember from tests the heat didn't really matter that much. And the speed difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM isn't huge either. Sound might be a different story though.

The only real difference speed-wise would be the SSD but this option is simply too expensive for some people, and in many cases just a bonus, and not a necessity.

The 5400RPM is really find for most day-to-day things, unless you're doing a lot of very specific work where HD speed matters. Again: not for most people. It'll open up apps fast enough, it'll copy stuff fast enough, etc.

5400 RPM drives are good enough for most people. Most people aren't going to buy SSDs because they perceive them as WAY overpriced.

My feeling is that 5400 rpm drives are the bottleneck for most systems today. Of course, it depends on your usage but most people find an SSD to be the single best upgrade. A hybrid would be a good choice for those needing greater storage.

Can the stock 5400rpm HDD even take advantage of the new SATA 6Gb/s architecture?

eoren1 said:

Would love to see the speed from those that have replaced the stock HDD with a SSD and/or see what the server HDD show...

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I have a base model 2.3GHz with a samsung 256gb ssd and 8gb ram. It is faster then any mini I ever owned, but I don't game.

I have modded over 100 minis for sale personal use and a few birthday and christmas gifts. My gut feeling for these minis is buy a 2.5 ghz model for 799 and add a ssd. Keep the 4gb ram in it and you will have the best all around mini for power speed and cost. Down the road when 8gb ram sticks get cheap put in a pair of them if you need them. Here is my thread on upgrading a base mini and building a backup osx.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1194678/

philipma1957 said:

I Down the road when 8gb ram sticks get cheap put in a pair of them if you need them.

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Are you certain that the 2011 mini will use 16GB ram? That would be sweet if true.

It seems perfectly normal for Apple to put an averagely slow 5400rpm average 500GB hdd average 2GB ram in their base 2011 mini; after all it is fortunate to have such a low cost entry Mac period. My first mini was the 1.4Ghz G4 and for what it was, I loved it! Was it fast? No. Did it scream geeekbench marks to brag about? No. Did it work flawlessly and quietly on my desktop? Heck Yeah. Until the mini, it cost much bigger bucks to earn the right to bitch about Apple specs!

Mr.C said:

If that's the case why do they offer the 7200RPM 750GB HD as an option ?

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maybe they were more into saving money than heat.

BeatCrazy said:

Can the stock 5400rpm HDD even take advantage of the new SATA 6Gb/s architecture?

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No. Even a 7200 rpm drive can't take advantage of SATA 3Gb/s.

srf4real said:

Are you certain that the 2011 mini will use 16GB ram? That would be sweet if true.

It seems perfectly normal for Apple to put an averagely slow 5400rpm average 500GB hdd average 2GB ram in their base 2011 mini; after all it is fortunate to have such a low cost entry Mac period. My first mini was the 1.4Ghz G4 and for what it was, I loved it! Was it fast? No. Did it scream geeekbench marks to brag about? No. Did it work flawlessly and quietly on my desktop? Heck Yeah. Until the mini, it cost much bigger bucks to earn the right to bitch about Apple specs!

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owc seems to think the 2.5 and the 2.7 will run 8gb sticks for a total of 16gb. Tooo much money to even think about that option ! I don't mind the 5400 rpm hdd or the 2gb ram. 8gb in the form of a pair of 4gb sticks is about 50 to 60 bucks.

most all of us users don't need the 8gb. When I ran the 2.3 with handbrake and a dvd I got the ram to go to 3.86gb used and about 3.5Gb free. So 2gb is not enough 4gb is on the border and 8gb will be more then I will need. Depending on what I decide to do I may sell a few modded 2.3 minis on ebay make them with samsung 256gb ssds and 8gb ram. I think I can clear 100 bucks on each one I sell. I would sell four or five and use the profit to buy myself a 2.5 with the better gpu. It will give me some work for august.
I think the sweet machine may be the 2.5 with a ssd or big hdd. It is 799 a diy 750 gb hdd is 95 total of 894.

The read/write speeds of the base mini's HD are about 50-60MB/sec. No-where near as fast as the SSD in my MacBook Air, which is clear when launching apps. But other than that... not much to complain

eoren1 said:

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The more I think about the more I find myself really okay with these speeds. Looked up a 10,000 rpm drive which got to about 110 MB/s. So 65 is not a big problem and the fact that the fw800 drive did as well as the internal means I have a nice 2.5 TB setup right now.
SSD will clearly boost those speeds but until Lightroom is ahown to benefit from it (and a recent solid write up says it makes no difference), I think I'll be pleased with these results.

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Yeah, once you get past booting and launching apps, in many cases the difference between HDD and SSD diminishes pretty much to zero. I have a 7200 RPM drive in my MacBook, and while it does boot and launch faster, it's not such an amazing difference that I would refuse to go back.

Those numbers are lower than a 2yr old 2tb caviar green. Yikes! Seems like there is a need for taking those Sata Ports external... Better yet.. Where are the real Thunderbolt solutions that don't involve raping my bank account!

I did think about going with either an SSD or an SSD/HDD dual combination in the new Mac Mini but in the end I decided against it and just went with the 7200RPM 750GB HD instead. For my normal everyday uses and I don't use the Mini as much as I used to since getting an iPad I don't think the exorbitant cost of an SSD is not justifiable right now.

My Mini is normally in sleep mode and hardly gets turned off. I suspect the faster CPU, more RAM and faster HD in the new Mini will make a difference anyway minimal or otherwise. Down the road if I want to add an SSD I can always do so or if Apple offers something better then the Mini but without the display of the iMac I may end up upgrading to that anyway.

I think for someone doing regular heavy duty work like photo/video editing, graphic design etc. It may well be justifiable to get an SSD.

eoren1 said:

I just downloaded and ran the Blackmagic DiskSpeed test on my 2011 iMac Mini (2.5GHz i5) with stock 5400 RPM drive and compared it to a 2TB drive in a FW800 enclosure (Deskstar 5k3000) as well as a 1TB drive in a USB2 case. Results seem disappointing for the stock HDD. Appreciate your thoughts.
Write (MB/sec) Read (MB/sec)
Stock HDD 65 65
FW 800 68 83
USB2 30 35

For those with an SSD, can you run the tests and report your numbers? Also, those who upgraded to a 7200 drive (or have the server version), please add yours as well.
Thanks!
E

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The results of the FW800 are not much higher than the stock HDD...