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Is SSD the only way to speed up a 2014 MacMini?

DS-1

DS-1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 2, 2019
9
2
Italy
Hi guys!

I have a 2014 MacMini (1.4Ghz Dual core i5, 4gb RAM) that is EXTREMELY slow. I've found here and there a lot of posts about this slow machine and everyone tells that the onyl way to speed up A LOT these machines is to put an SSD on it (or use an external USB 3.0 SSD drive).

Is it possible that Apple uses a so slow hdd on it that completely kills the MacMini?

Thanks in advance for the reply!
 
Throw some RAM in there too.
Not sure if this is right
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Fishrrman said:
Upgrading the drive to an SSD (internal or external via USB3) is "the only way"....
Click to expand...

I suspected that this was the only way. That 5400rpm drive really makes the MacMini go slower that a Pentium4 with Windows Vista...
 
As soon as SSD's were an option, I jumped on it. From SCSI to 10K Raptor and then SATA II and III. What we have available now is a dream!
 
DS-1 said:
Hi guys!

I have a 2014 MacMini (1.4Ghz Dual core i5, 4gb RAM) that is EXTREMELY slow. I've found here and there a lot of posts about this slow machine and everyone tells that the onyl way to speed up A LOT these machines is to put an SSD on it (or use an external USB 3.0 SSD drive).

Is it possible that Apple uses a so slow hdd on it that completely kills the MacMini?

Thanks in advance for the reply!
Click to expand...

Another thing (although pretty exotic on a base 2014 Mini) would be adding an eGPU by using the TB3-TB2 adapter. A SSD and an eGPU would certainly give new life to your Mini. In the future, you could use both with a newer Mini (although the SSD might be installed on an external enclosure, if SATA, or internally, if NVMe on a compatible Mac).

Look:
 
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That 5400rpm drive is for time machine and book/music collections. Everything else belongs on external SSD, or modern high speed multi terabyte drives in caddies. I don't mind having old, slow and reliable inside, as long as I can keep the resource intensive stuff on big cheap fast externals.
 
DS-1 said:
Hi guys!

I have a 2014 MacMini (1.4Ghz Dual core i5, 4gb RAM) that is EXTREMELY slow. I've found here and there a lot of posts about this slow machine and everyone tells that the onyl way to speed up A LOT these machines is to put an SSD on it (or use an external USB 3.0 SSD drive).

Is it possible that Apple uses a so slow hdd on it that completely kills the MacMini?

Thanks in advance for the reply!
Click to expand...
In the year 2015 I bought a Refurbished 2014 MM 8GB Ram, 256SSD from the Apple On-line Store. Prior to that I had purchased a Refurbished MM(Late 2012), 4GB Ram, 500GB HD from the Apple On-line Store which still serves me well. However, the MM with the SSD is the "only way to go" in purchasing any future computer in terms of speed and smooth operation.

I recently purchased another Refurbished 6-Core MM 2018,8GB Ram, 256SSD from the Apple On-line Veterans and Military Store. For additional storage, if needed, I also purchased a Samsung T-5 External 500 GB SSD at the same time.
 
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Three questions for those who have done this:

1. The cable kit at OWC also shows (or showed last time I checked) a metal plate and two screws to screw on top of the mainboard connector to hold it in place. The cable kits I see on Amazon don't show this. Is the necessary?

2. Will any X2 ssd drive work?

3. Should I just reinstall MacOS fresh and then copy the user files from the other drive and reload the apps? Or is disk cloning from whatever slow drive the machine came from a workable step? What cloning software would you all recommend.

This is for my parent's computer so that I will work on for a few days over Christmas. Really hoping this is smooth.
 
Can't help with questions 1 and 2... I have a 2014 2.8ghz/8gb Mini with the Fusion drive. I used a couple simple terminal commands to split the 128gb SSD from the 1TB internal hard drive, and I boot from the internal 128gb SSD which works great.

For question 3, I'm a very happy use of Carbon Copy Cloner for this sort of thing. You should be able to clone your original hard drive to the SSD and have everything exactly the same. IMO this is a lot less trouble than re-installing and re-configuring everything. They have a free trial which should be all you need for this, but I find the full version indispensible for daily backups.
 
For any 2014 Mac Mini owners that are not yet convinced that it is worth booting and running off of an external SSD (e.g. Samsung T5), the following Black Magic Speed Tests may help…

The first 2 are a Late 2014 Mac Mini with an
* internal 1TB 5,400rpm spinner
* external 1TB Samsung T5

The last 2 are a Late 2018 Mac Mini with an
* external 1TB Samsung T5 (same T5 as above)
* internal 1TB 256GB "Apple" SSD

GetRealBro
 

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Ramias said:
3. Should I just reinstall MacOS fresh and then copy the user files from the other drive and reload the apps? Or is disk cloning from whatever slow drive the machine came from a workable step? What cloning software would you all recommend.

This is for my parent's computer so that I will work on for a few days over Christmas. Really hoping this is smooth.
Click to expand...
A clean install and rebuild is the ideal because it reduces the OS/app foot print by removing cruft and unused apps etc. BUT…A clean install is very tedious, time consuming and requires good internet bandwidth to download various macOS updates, new versions of apps, etc. So it’s not easy to predict the time required to complete that task

Carbon Copy Cloner can build a bootable identical copy of a 1TB HDD onto an external 1TB SSD (e.g. T5) in an hour or two. This gives you a bootable backup of the HDD that you can use while you do the clean install/rebuild. The worst case is you leave your parents with a perfectly good external SSD until you get back to complete the clean install/rebuild.

FWIW That’s what I’m doing to “replace” my 2014 Mini with a 2018 Mini. I’m booting/running the 2018 Mini from an external T5 with a Carbon Copy Clone of my 2014 Mini’s 1TB HDD. This got me up and running quickly. Now I’m taking my time installing macOS updates, apps, etc., testing apps and prefs, etc. on the much faster internal 256GB "apple" SSD.
 
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getrealbro said:
For any 2014 Mac Mini owners that are not yet convinced that it is worth booting and running off of an external SSD (e.g. Samsung T5), the following Black Magic Speed Tests may help…
Click to expand...

Wow, that 5400 RPM disk is slow! Mine clocks closer to 100MB/sec. Here are a few other data points

2014 2.8ghz i5 Mini with original Apple 128gb internal SSD

mini2014-128ssd.png



2012 2.6ghz Quad i7 Mini Server with original Apple 256gb internal SSD

mini_sm256e.jpg



2012 2.6ghz Quad i7 Mini Server with 1TB external USB 3.0 Samsung T3 SSD

samsung1tb.jpg
 
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Reporting back. Upgrade to internal SSD from OWC and Carbon Copy Clone has given my folks basically a brand new computer.

I want to set the 1TB up for just storage for photos and such. I’ll blow away the container disk and APFS with the Disk Utility GUI. Should I just format it as regular HFS+ for using the HDD with Catalina?

ps. Took over 6 hours for carbon copy clone to copy 380GB from the HDD.
 
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I'd stick with HFS+ on the HDD. AFAIK there is no real advantage to APFS on spinners other than flexible partitions.

I'm thinking of doing the same thing to my 2014 Mini with a 1T HDD. Did you get the OWC SSD Kit? If so, which size and did it include the cable, hold down screws, etc.

TIA - GetRealBro
 
I got the 480GB kit. It was just under $190 via OWC on Amazon. Same price as OWC direct but I had an amazon gift card. Came with everything. Two screw drivers, spudger, cable, plate to hold cable attachment in place. Screws.

It was pretty easy and worth doing — the 2014 was unusable prior.

I got the kit to have it shipped directly to my parents and I had no margin for error and no time to reorder parts if there was a problem (and didn’t want to deal with TSA and traveling with my own screwdrivers).

If I were doing this for myself and had the luxury of time I would look hard at this:https://m.xt-xinte.com/XT-XINTE-PCI...-Mini-A1347-MEGEN2-MEGEM2-MEGEQ2-p556999.html that I saw in another thread on here. Hat would allow for less expensive and larger drives. But since this was for my parents and I had limited time I went with the kit from a vendor that would also support us if needed (though things were easy and no support was needed).
 
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