Hi my 2012 Mac mini 256 ssd has suddenly become slow to get to the Apple logo screen was quick before any idea what slowing it down got lots of space left on the ssd all my files on on external drives. Not installed any new apps etc.
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2012 slow boot time
- Thread starter adamcarvell
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There are 2 possibilities. The first possibility is that and if you don't own an Apple SSD drive, the third party SSD drive installed in the Mini may not offer support for self-TRIM (known as garbage collection and dynamic purging by itself) and unlike a hard drive, SSD may report the deleted space as being free but instead has not been zeroed out. This happens if the system pages (memory paging) the internal SSD a lot if you have a lot of applications running and it is running out of physical memory or if you use Chrome with a lot of pages opened. While the latest Apple OS supports software TRIM, it sometimes does not work all that well with some SSD drive.
If this is the case, the solution would be to clone your SSD boot drive to another bootable hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner and then boot from this other drive and zero out your SSD. 7 passes ought to do it. Then reclone your SSD drive with this bootable copy. You will regain back all the speeds once your cache has built up in the internal boot SSD.
The second possibility is that your SSD is slowly dying and this is a symptom of that (my experience having 2 SSDs died on me in my 2011 Mini). The symptom would be like you see an Apple logo and the progress bar initially goes really fast and then stalls about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way and slowly crawl to the end before the log-in screen. Again, if this is the case, just use Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your internal SSD to an external bootable drive. Once you did that, erase your SSD and re-clone it back. If the SSD still boots roughly the same as before the wipe, then the SSD is on its last legs. You need to be ready to replace it.
Hope this helps..
yes the the macintosh ssd is the only one that it shows its freeyed out until i untick the lock .
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mine chimes straight away but takes ages to load the apple logo and bar one it finds it it loads the bar quickly.
Those are the same symptoms I experienced with my Mac Mini when it had issues with the SSD; chimes right away but takes ages to load the apple logo. I assume you have no other hidden partitions aside the Mac OS and no attached external USB drives?
no hidden partitions but have external drives plugged into the usb ports plus a usb hub.
Can you disconnect temporarily all your external drives and the USB hub and leave just the keyboard and mouse connected. Does it now boot up much faster?
If so, then your SSD should be working ok. If your Mini still takes a long time before the Apple logo comes up, then there could be something wrong with the internal SSD. The next question, assuming your Mini shows the Apple logo quickly after all the USB drives are disconnected would be; did you upgrade your Mini to Mojave or High Sierra with the combo supplemental recently? If so, you may have received the new EFI boot rom and SMC firmware which now treats all USB devices as secondary boot devices. What that means is that, there is a delay in checking all the drives connected to the Mini before the Apple logo shows up.
Your EFI boot rom version should be 280.0.0.0 for Mac Mini 6,1 and 6,2 (2012 model) and if so, yes I'm afraid this is if you are on the latest Mojave or High Sierra. The update installer will automatically install the firmware and you will not be notified. It is to address the APFS volume booting support with SSD and spinning drives.
You can solve the delay issue and get back to booting somewhat quickly again. There'll be a very slight delay after the arrangement, but not the delay you're experiencing now.
You need to identify which USB device that is causing the problem. Identify which devices you have. Are they USB 2, USB 3.0, USB 3.0 UASP and USB 3.1 Gen 2.
Reconnect the USB drive to the Mini "ONE" at the time, starting with the fastest drive interface you have. For example, if you have a USB 3.1 Gen 2 drive, hook this up first and then turn on the mac. Next, disconnect the drive and reconnect another USB drive. The faster interface should have the least amount of delay. The slower interface like USB 2 and USB 1 would increase the delay. If your USB 2 and 1 device(s) are the culprit (which I think they are); then you can deal with them by upgrading the interface to USB 3.0, or turn them off during boot and turn them on again once the Mini reaches the desktop. Or be content with the delay and leave it as is.
Ok thanks will try it tomorrow. Not sure if I’ve had an update lately that’s changed anything or the hub or WD drives are causing the problem as I say it’s a sudden problem.
It could be or not be the update. Or the hub / WD drives are causing the problem if it happened all of a sudden. Good luck!
unplugged the hub it booted quickly. i was then prompted to do the new update which i did restarted it was fine .
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