Mac mini late 2012 ssd upgrade

[AvantiMP]

Hi, best regards to everyone here and thank you guys in advance.

I was having some issues on my late 2012 Mac mini (16bg ram i7) and having a fusion drive (512 ssd+1tb hhd) I decided to upgrade to a new ssd (crucial 1tb) to stay with the new ssd as primary and the hhd as secondary drive without fusion drive. In this configuration I had OS sierra and was not happy with it because it had bugs like the dock kept freezing even being enabled to hide and to hide it again I had to open a new window. Also some others with logic but mainly display problems. I must say that except for the cases where I used a lot of plugins and the system became very slow there were no crashes. Being a logic x user I needed at least OS sierra to be able to run 10.4 so I decided to switch to High sierra at the time of the upgrade. Long story short, the system runs worse than before and I don't know if it's because of the OS or the disk. I have done first aid on the disks and everything seems to work fine but when I load some plugins in logic I get the system overloaded message. Now I'm thinking of going backwards on the OS because as I remember Yosemite worked great but I should go backwards with Logic as well which I don't like. What do you think could be the problem?
Thank you very much.

 

[Boyd01]

Sorry, not sure what the problem is. However, I have a 2012 2.6ghz quad-core i7/16gb Mini with an original Apple internal 256gb SSD. It always worked great for me with Logic Pro, starting with Mountain Lion and later upgrading to Sierra. With Sierra, I booted from a 1tb external Samsung T3 SSD and there was very little difference from the internal SSD. Never saw the dock freeze you describe. In fact, that was an exteremely stable machine all around. I was also using Final Cut Pro pretty heavily at that time.

But my use of Logic is for recording live music with (typically) 8 tracks and basic plug-ins like EQ and reverb. Have switched to a 2018 Mini now and the 2012 Mini is just a file/time machine server running Catalina. No problems there either.

A 512gb ssd with a fusion drive sounds strange, I assume you installed that yourself? I have a 2014 Mini with a fusion drive and the SSD is 128gb. I split it from the hard drive and boot directly from the SSD, works very well. Have you trued doing that? Use the 512gb SSD as a boot drive and the 1tb hard disk for data. But I wonder if the hard drive is starting to fail? I had a base model 2012 Mini that ran fine from an external SSD but the internal 512gb hard drive started throwing lots of errors and causing crashes, even though it was only being used for time machine.

 

[AvantiMP]

Hi, thanks for your reply! As I remember when I installed sierra it was painful because it took me a lot of research to do the usb installation which ended up being that the file downloaded from apple has a date problem and all the programs I tried canceled the installation. That already gave me a bad feeling about the file but like I said, other than the display issues I had there were no serious problems. I think that when I recover from having done a new installation I will try to go to an older version of the OS because it is clear that the more updated it is, the worse the computer works, even if this is detrimental to having more updated apps. Regarding the 512 ssd, I have not installed it, it came from the manufacturer, I did not know it was so rare a 512 disk now you make me doubt its origin because I bought it in an apple distributor in Spain. But I've been all this time with it and worked great.

 

[Boyd01]

Regarding the 512 ssd, I have not installed it, it came from the manufacturer, I did not know it was so rare a 512 disk now you make me doubt its origin because I bought it in an apple distributor in Spain.

I really don't think that could be original. See "standard storage", the Apple Fusion drive was a 128gb SSD paired with a slow 5400 RPM 1TB hard drive. I don't think Apple offered any option for a 512gb SSD in 2012. The SSD-based 2012 Mini (like mine) was only 256gb. They had a version of the 2012 Mini server that had two 256gb SSD's for a total of 512gb.

Mac mini "Core i7" 2.6 (Late 2012) Specs (Late 2012, BTO/CTO, Macmini6,2, A1347, 2570): EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for the Mac mini "Core i7" 2.6 (Late 2012). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.

everymac.com

 

[AvantiMP]

Well it's been a while since I made this post and I wanted to update the status of my computer as if to close the problem. I am finally back to where I was at the beginning with the fusion drive, after trying many OS's (Yosemite, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave & Catalina) I can say that at least on my computer based on the apps and audio programs I use for work, I have stuck with High Sierra which seems to be the most stable and fastest. As for upgrading to the 1TB ssd has not worked for me and what I have been researching on the web is that a larger ssd does not mean faster speed but quite the opposite, with a smaller ssd the OS is usually faster and at least on a computer almost 10 years old there is no advantage perhaps there is on computers with more updated technology. At least this way I can work and honestly I use it quite a bit and it holds up unless I overdo it with a lot of plugins. Thanks to all for the answers and any doubt will be welcome.

Cheers!