Base 2014 Mac Mini - worth upgrading HD?

[lord e55ex]

All

I have just acquired a used Mac Mini 2014, base model with a 500GB hard drive. The intention is to use it purely for working from home and keeping backup of photos etc, as I hate to say it, I use my iPad Pro all the time now.

Has anyone updated a similar model and would they recommend for performance reasons? Ive come from a SSD on a mac air, so the performance is a tad slower.

 

[MBAir2010]

i have the same computer wth the same functions, and run El Capitan, which runs great compared to High Sierra.
the recent downgrade saved me from buying over 80$ of ram and adding an SSD and less spinning ball.
I have 31GB of photos and the OS X plays live ones.

what you can do is use the mini, after a month if you have the budget, upgrade.

i hope this reply helps!

 

[lord e55ex]

Thanks for the response. To confirm, you haven’t considered removing the HDD and replacing with say a SSD?

 

[Boyd01]

i have the same computer wth the same functions, and run El Capitan, which runs great compared to High Sierra. the recent downgrade saved me from buying over 80$ of ram and adding an SSD

If you could add more RAM, then you don't have the same computer. RAM is not upgradeable on the 2014 Mini.

I have the same computer, but only use it as an itunes server. It's just painful for anything else, was changing some settings yesterday and had to wait almost a minute to just open System Prefs. I also run El Capitan, which is what was originally installed.

I also have a 2013 MacBook Air and had a 2011 before that. In terms of geekbench the mini might be "a tad slower" but not in terms of overall user experience.

I think a ssd will help - probably a lot - but there's no way around the 4gb bottleneck. You could add a USB SSD - A 500gb Samsung T5 is only about $130 if you shop around, that will be about 5x faster than the original HD and you won't need to open it. Then if you aren't happy, you could still use the T5 for other things.

 

[MBAir2010]

Thanks for the response. To confirm, you haven’t considered removing the HDD and replacing with say a SSD?

not after installing ElCapitan, the is no need. the speed is very good on the mini.
seems like i have a new computer.
i have 3 external HDs and just adding more is a waste of money.

enjoy your mac mini!

 

[bopajuice]

I bought a new 2014 Mac Mini 2.6 8gb ram with a 1TB spinner a while back.

Was so slow it was almost unusable to me. I upgraded the internal 1tb with a Samsung 250gb SSD. Night and day faster. It took me all of 10 minutes to swap the drive. Make sure you have the right tools. ifixit.com is a great source for how to's.

 

[FelixDerKater]

Cheap SSD will do it.

 

[Boyd01]

I bought a new 2014 Mac Mini 2.6 8gb ram with a 1TB spinner a while back.

But that has twice the clock speed and twice the RAM of the base model Mini. Also a better graphics chip. Just sayin'....

 

[bopajuice]

But that has twice the clock speed and twice the RAM of the base model Mini. Also a better graphics chip. Just sayin'....

Agreed. But the 2.6 with a spinner was still pretty slow out of the box. The addition of an SSD made a faster than base model even faster. I would guess adding an SSD to just about any computer would speed things up.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I also had the base mini and the first thing I did was put in an SSD. It’s noticeably faster at booting and launching apps, which is critical since the 4GB of RAM cannot be upgraded, and apps will get dropped from memory more readily.

 

[Smeaton1724]

I picked one of these machines up a few weeks ago very cheaply (£170 GBP: Apple Refurb £399) and have experimented as the 500GB drive was just too slow for me.

Firstly I used an External SSD as the boot drive and secondly an internal SSD. I was kind of happy with the external solution, it was simple to do and gave me the option of keeping the original drive in place. Ideal to use the external SSD between Macs and keep the internal drive with a fresh copy of Mac OS or just for files. Although the speed was topping out at 300MB/s read and write and it just wasn't as snappy as I'd hoped. Don't get me wrong the performance was faster and Mac OS felt better running on an SSD than HDD, it seems iCloud syncing performed better and I could have lived with the performance - this isn't my primary machine, its a media machine where the OS drags content off another 2 4TB external HDD's. It just felt messy having another external drive and a useless internal HDD.

This weekend I swapped out the internal drive with a Samsung SSD (cloned copy of the external SSD), enabled Trim via Terminal and have been getting read and write above 400 MB/s (Estimated from memory - can update post with actual figures). The machine Geekbenches 3046/5416. I'm happier, it feels like it is now a reasonable machine, completely solid for media, suitable for word processing, web browsing, downloads and maybe even some basic Unity 2D work (Maybe stretching with that last one). The only insurmountable problem now is 4GB RAM!

The external USB SSD was: WD WDBK3E2560PSL-WESN 256 GB My Passport SSD Portable External Solid State Drive, Black/Grey

The internal SSD is: Samsung 250 GB 860 EVO Sata III 64L V NAND Solid State Drive,MZ-76E250B/EU

The SSD upgrade is a must, whether that be internal or external is up to the confidence of the person doing it. I have built PC's before and have experience of Mac Mini's so it took me under 30 minutes from opening the Amazon package to putting it back together. Cloning didn't take much time either as it was External SSD to Internal SSD.

 

[Boyd01]

Ideal to use the external SSD between Macs and keep the internal drive with a fresh copy of Mac OS or just for files. Although the speed was topping out at 300MB/s read and write and it just wasn't as snappy as I'd hoped.
.....
This weekend I swapped out the internal drive with a Samsung SSD (cloned copy of the external SSD), enabled Trim via Terminal and have been getting read and write above 400 MB/s (Estimated from memory - can update post with actual figures).

Good post, but I think you would have been happier with a better external SSD. I use a 2012 quad mini that boots Sierra from an external 1TB Samsung T3 and this is what I get

This same machine has an original internal Apple 256gb SSD and this is what I get from it

In terms of user experience, the internal and external drives "feel" the same to me. The only difference I note is that booting is faster from the internal - about 15 seconds vs 30 seconds from the external. Now I believe the 2014 internal SSD can use a faster interface if you have the right kind of cable and SSD.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Good post, but I think you would have been happier with a better external SSD. I use a 2012 quad mini that boots Sierra from an external 1TB Samsung T3 and this is what I get

This same machine has an original internal Apple 256gb SSD and this is what I get from it

In terms of user experience, the internal and external drives "feel" the same to me. The only difference I note is that booting is faster from the internal - about 15 seconds vs 30 seconds from the external. Now I believe the 2014 internal SSD can use a faster interface if you have the right kind of cable and SSD.

Best you can hope for on the SATA III bus is about 600MB/s, but that is best case. Really, while better access speeds are certainly a big help, it’s the very low latency seek that makes SSDs seem so much more responsive. Even a 300MB/s R/W will feel so much faster because of that. A mechanical hard drive has to seek with moving parts.

Just be sure to enable TRIM, or you will see declines in write over time.

 

[Smeaton1724]

Good post, but I think you would have been happier with a better external SSD. I use a 2012 quad mini that boots Sierra from an external 1TB Samsung T3 and this is what I get

This same machine has an original internal Apple 256gb SSD and this is what I get from it

In terms of user experience, the internal and external drives "feel" the same to me. The only difference I note is that booting is faster from the internal - about 15 seconds vs 30 seconds from the external. Now I believe the 2014 internal SSD can use a faster interface if you have the right kind of cable and SSD.

I’m happy with the internal SSD performance, escpecially against the stock 500GB and the external, Im getting a bump on writes over external. It is a SATA connection. Is your Apple SSD a PCIe one?

One thing I read is that you can’t enable TRIM on USB powered drives - only on internal ones. So my thoughts were just to go the route of replacing the internal and enabling it via a quick a terminal command. Although that may be wrong and you can indeed enable TRIM somehow on an external SSD?

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I’m happy with the internal SSD performance, escpecially against the stock 500GB and the external, Im getting a bump on writes over external. It is a SATA connection. Is your Apple SSD a PCIe one?

One thing I read is that you can’t enable TRIM on USB powered drives - only on internal ones. So my thoughts were just to go the route of replacing the internal and enabling it via a quick a terminal command. Although that may be wrong and you can indeed enable TRIM somehow on an external SSD?

From what I gather, you can't enable TRIM though USB on SATA drives, as it's a command issued over the SATA bus.

 

[Smeaton1724]

From what I gather, you can't enable TRIM though USB on SATA drives, as it's a command issued over the SATA bus.

Right, so those booting from external SSD's will see reduced drive performance over time.

 

[Boyd01]

True you can’t enable trim, but there is plenty of controversy in the forums about whether it’s needed. Personally, I don’t know. I use my quad Mini exclusively for video/audio editing and it feels very fast to me running on the external SSD. I read a long review of the Samsung T3 and they tested it over a period of time and concluded that performance did not degrade due to lack of trim support.

I’ll leave that to somebody else to figure out, I’m happy with my setup and not interested in opening up the Mini. I certainly could do it, but there just seems more risk than reward. There are a lot of threads from people who thought it would be easy but ended up with problems.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

True you can’t enable trim, but there is plenty of controversy in the forums about whether it’s needed. Personally, I don’t know. I use my quad Mini exclusively for video/audio editing and it feels very fast to me running on the external SSD. I read a long review of the Samsung T3 and they tested it over a period of time and concluded that performance did not degrade due to lack of trim support.

I’ll leave that to somebody else to figure out, I’m happy with my setup and not interested in opening up the Mini. I certainly could do it, but there just seems more risk than reward. There are a lot of threads from people who thought it would be easy but ended up with problems.

I had a Sandisk SSD and forgot to enable TRIM on it, and after 8 months, write speeds were in the 100 MB/s area, when it should have been getting closer to 500. It wasn’t the system, as a new SSD hit expectations.

 

[ActionableMango]

I had a Sandisk SSD and forgot to enable TRIM on it, and after 8 months, write speeds were in the 100 MB/s area, when it should have been getting closer to 500. It wasn’t the system, as a new SSD hit expectations.

Were you running near the drive's storage capacity? That's the other piece of the puzzle that causes the slowdown, which most people forget or don't know about. I think that's why there are so many people who claim the problem doesn't exist for them...they don't have high capacity utilization.

(If you weren't near capacity, then that's really interesting to me.)

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Were you running near the drive's storage capacity? That's the other piece of the puzzle that causes the slowdown, which most people forget or don't know about. I think that's why there are so many people who claim the problem doesn't exist for them...they don't have high capacity utilization.

(If you weren't near capacity, then that's really interesting to me.)

Not really, maybe half full at best. The problem I think was that I had reformatted the drive a few times (moved it from a mini to a Pro), and by not having TRIM enavled, I don’t think proper garbage collection went on for long enough that it really slowed the write speeds. Enabling TRIM later did help regain some of that lost speed.

 

[Smeaton1724]

True you can’t enable trim, but there is plenty of controversy in the forums about whether it’s needed. Personally, I don’t know. I use my quad Mini exclusively for video/audio editing and it feels very fast to me running on the external SSD. I read a long review of the Samsung T3 and they tested it over a period of time and concluded that performance did not degrade due to lack of trim support.

I’ll leave that to somebody else to figure out, I’m happy with my setup and not interested in opening up the Mini. I certainly could do it, but there just seems more risk than reward. There are a lot of threads from people who thought it would be easy but ended up with problems.

The T3 is an excellent external and if you are getting solid performance then I wouldn't open a Mini up either! It's funny as since I picked the base 2014 Mini up cheaply it has made me look out for a 2012 Quad core even more, the fact I sold the one I had still annoys me !!

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

The T3 is an excellent external and if you are getting solid performance then I wouldn't open a Mini up either! It's funny as since I picked the base 2014 Mini up cheaply it has made me look out for a 2012 Quad core even more, the fact I sold the one I had still annoys me !!

Yeah, the 2014 was a big miss. Soldered RAM, no quad cores, secure screws to make it harder to upgrade. The 2012 was the last good mini. I suspect the mini may never get updated. It’s just not a high enough margin product anymore. iPad is now Apple’s entry-level product.

 

[lord e55ex]

So is the 2014 base model that hard to upgrade?? I was considering adding a SSD but the comments here are not encouraging....

Would an SSD even make that much of a difference performance wise to warrant the risk?
[doublepost=1530032750][/doublepost]

I picked one of these machines up a few weeks ago very cheaply (£170 GBP: Apple Refurb £399) and have experimented as the 500GB drive was just too slow for me.

Firstly I used an External SSD as the boot drive and secondly an internal SSD. I was kind of happy with the external solution, it was simple to do and gave me the option of keeping the original drive in place. Ideal to use the external SSD between Macs and keep the internal drive with a fresh copy of Mac OS or just for files. Although the speed was topping out at 300MB/s read and write and it just wasn't as snappy as I'd hoped. Don't get me wrong the performance was faster and Mac OS felt better running on an SSD than HDD, it seems iCloud syncing performed better and I could have lived with the performance - this isn't my primary machine, its a media machine where the OS drags content off another 2 4TB external HDD's. It just felt messy having another external drive and a useless internal HDD.

This weekend I swapped out the internal drive with a Samsung SSD (cloned copy of the external SSD), enabled Trim via Terminal and have been getting read and write above 400 MB/s (Estimated from memory - can update post with actual figures). The machine Geekbenches 3046/5416. I'm happier, it feels like it is now a reasonable machine, completely solid for media, suitable for word processing, web browsing, downloads and maybe even some basic Unity 2D work (Maybe stretching with that last one). The only insurmountable problem now is 4GB RAM!

The external USB SSD was: WD WDBK3E2560PSL-WESN 256 GB My Passport SSD Portable External Solid State Drive, Black/Grey

The internal SSD is: Samsung 250 GB 860 EVO Sata III 64L V NAND Solid State Drive,MZ-76E250B/EU

The SSD upgrade is a must, whether that be internal or external is up to the confidence of the person doing it. I have built PC's before and have experience of Mac Mini's so it took me under 30 minutes from opening the Amazon package to putting it back together. Cloning didn't take much time either as it was External SSD to Internal SSD.

Was the upgarde process pain free? Ive seen a vids and looks straightforward enough

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

So is the 2014 base model that hard to upgrade?? I was considering adding a SSD but the comments here are not encouraging....

Would an SSD even make that much of a difference performance wise to warrant the risk?
[doublepost=1530032750][/doublepost]

Was the upgarde process pain free? Ive seen a vids and looks straightforward enough

It’s not that much harder, you will just need a special security screwdriver to remove one component, and the tool is something like $6 online. Everything else can be done with standard tools, it just takes a little time. Just look for the instructions on iFixit and it should take you maybe 30 minutes, depending on how handy you are with tools

I maintain the SSD upgrade is well worth it, as it will really help the system feel faster in everyday use. You won’t regret the work. Just be sure to buy enough SSD capacity for your needs so you don’t have to do it again. Once you are done and have MacOS installed, be sure to enable TRIM.

 

[Smeaton1724]

So is the 2014 base model that hard to upgrade?? I was considering adding a SSD but the comments here are not encouraging....

Would an SSD even make that much of a difference performance wise to warrant the risk?
[doublepost=1530032750][/doublepost]

Was the upgarde process pain free? Ive seen a vids and looks straightforward enough

I ordered the logic board removal tool and had T6 and T8 torx already. I followed the ifixit guide. Personally I would say it was extremely easy, obviously you have to be careful and organised in where you put the screws you take out - I used a few Tupperware boxes.

Like I said in a previous post it took minimal effort for me, I’d do it again right now. To caveat though in the past I have had a Mac Mini 2012 open, iBooks and also replaced iPhone and iPad screens, built PC’s etc so I know what to expect from opening machines up. One major bonus with the Mac Mini is it is just T6 and T8 screws - no glue!!!