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Mac Mini running slow... *Need help*

M

MacNoobGuy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 18, 2012
497
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Hi all, I'm running OSX Mavericks on my Mac Mini mid-2011 with 8GB of RAM and the HDD it came with, a 500GB HDD. The HDD seems to be under a lot of strain. How can I check how much strain it's actually under? I think the HDD that came with it is a 5400RPM drive. Would it make a difference if I upgraded it to a 7200RPM drive or would I need to get an SSD to really see a difference?

By the way, if I formatted the MacMini HDD and then use the external USB 1TB drive with Time Machine to restore it, what would happen? It feels like a lot of 'cruft' has built up over time and I use this machine often. I haven't re-formatted it since I first bought it in April 2012. Would this make a difference or would I just be putting all the files back where they were?

Thank you for any help!
 
How full is the drive ? What does Activity Monitor say for disk/memory usage ? What are you running on the machine ?

I have a 2009 Mini and since putting 8gb ram and a 750 HDD in it it's running great. So your machine should be sweet too given its superior processor etc. I have never re-formatted the original 160gb HDD and the only issue was that it was full.

No doubt an SSD will make a big difference but it isn't strictly necessary.
 
Have you tried checking and repairing permissions?

I had some oddities with my mini after installing Mav, so I checked and it found quite a few errors, let it fix those and now it's running great.
 
MacNoobGuy said:
Hi all, I'm running OSX Mavericks on my Mac Mini mid-2011 with 8GB of RAM and the HDD it came with, a 500GB HDD. The HDD seems to be under a lot of strain. How can I check how much strain it's actually under? I think the HDD that came with it is a 5400RPM drive. Would it make a difference if I upgraded it to a 7200RPM drive or would I need to get an SSD to really see a difference?

By the way, if I formatted the MacMini HDD and then use the external USB 1TB drive with Time Machine to restore it, what would happen? It feels like a lot of 'cruft' has built up over time and I use this machine often. I haven't re-formatted it since I first bought it in April 2012. Would this make a difference or would I just be putting all the files back where they were?

Thank you for any help!
Click to expand...

Get an SSD it's well worth it. Don't buy a cheapo brand and save yourself some trouble. Intel, Samsung, Crucial... all good. There is a second drive kit for these as well, so you could have both drives, meaning you just need a small 120gb or so ssd.
 
Jambalaya said:
How full is the drive ? What does Activity Monitor say for disk/memory usage ? What are you running on the machine ?

I have a 2009 Mini and since putting 8gb ram and a 750 HDD in it it's running great. So your machine should be sweet too given its superior processor etc. I have never re-formatted the original 160gb HDD and the only issue was that it was full.

No doubt an SSD will make a big difference but it isn't strictly necessary.
Click to expand...

Alright, thanks.

It says this: 'Reads in: 260, 642' 'Reads out: 202,910'

What does it mean?
 

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MacNoobGuy said:
Alright, thanks!

Why does it say that it only supports 8GB though?
Click to expand...
Apple has a long history of understating maximum RAM supported for its models. a great number of Mac models support more RAM than Apple claims. As to Apple's reasoning behind this, who knows?
 
Alright, thanks!

But if I want to increase my RAM I have to throw away a perfectly good stick of 4GB of RAM, right?
 
MacNoobGuy said:
Alright, thanks!

But if I want to increase my RAM I have to throw away a perfectly good stick of 4GB of RAM, right?
Click to expand...

If your Mac came with 4 GB of RAM, that means you have two sticks of 2 GB each. Yes, you would have to replace each of those with the new RAM.
 
GGJstudios said:
If your Mac came with 4 GB of RAM, that means you have two sticks of 2 GB each. Yes, you would have to replace each of those with the new RAM.
Click to expand...

No, I've got 8GB of RAM total. 2x4GB sticks.

There's nothing else I can do with the 4GB stick is there? I'll just have to discard it? I can't install 3 sticks of RAM or use the 4GB in another way?
 
MacNoobGuy said:
No, I've got 8GB of RAM total. 2x4GB sticks.

There's nothing else I can do with the 4GB stick is there? I'll just have to discard it? I can't install 3 sticks of RAM or use the 4GB in another way?
Click to expand...
No, the mini only has two RAM slots. Unless you have another computer that uses the same type of RAM, there's nothing you can do with it.
 
MacNoobGuy said:
Thanks for posting that. Did you need to tweak anything in OSX for the Mac Mini to accept 16GB of RAM???
Click to expand...

Nope, no tweaking. Bought the system with 2GB of memory, took out and installed 2x4 GB sticks than later wanted more so I got 2x8 GB ram sticks and inserted normally, no tweaking and all has been well for more than 2 years. You can try and sell any left over memory if you wish, but I kept mine just in case
 
GGJstudios said:
No, the mini only has two RAM slots. Unless you have another computer that uses the same type of RAM, there's nothing you can do with it.
Click to expand...

Thanks
ABC5S said:
Nope, no tweaking. Bought the system with 2GB of memory, took out and installed 2x4 GB sticks than later wanted more so I got 2x8 GB ram sticks and inserted normally, no tweaking and all has been well for more than 2 years. You can try and sell any left over memory if you wish, but I kept mine just in case
Click to expand...

Alright, thanks. Yah, I started out with 2GB as well then I bought 2x4GB. Would 1x4GB + 1x8GB for a total of 12GB work? Does anyone know of 12GB working?

Thanks!
 
MacNoobGuy said:
Yah, I started out with 2GB as well then I bought 2x4GB. Would 1x4GB + 1x8GB for a total of 12GB work? Does anyone know of 12GB working?
Click to expand...
Yes, you can mix capacities with no problems. There is a slight (5-6%) performance benefit from using matched pairs of RAM, but not enough to negate the benefits of more RAM.
 
MacNoobGuy said:
Alright, thanks.

It says this: 'Reads in: 260, 642' 'Reads out: 202,910'

What does it mean?
Click to expand...

I assume that you mean

Reads in: 260,642
Writes out: 202,910.

This doesn't have anything to do with not having enough installed memory. This is just a running total of how man I/O Reads and I/O Writes have been issued. Some processes read a lot of data, and some write a lot of data.

You need to be looking at the Swap Used and Compressed metrics in the Memory tab of Activity Monitor to draw any conclusions that you may or may not be running low on memory.
 
MacNoobGuy said:
I maxed it out at 8GB.
Click to expand...
This should be fine for most normal usage. What are you running on the machine ?

Can you check how much of the 500gb HDD you are using (graphic in "about this mac" under storage) ? My 2009 mini was 2gb ram and a 160gb HDD which was nearly full and it was very slow until I upgraded. Your machine is a far better spec (as noted better than my now upgraded 8/750) so something is a bit odd.

Also you said the hard disk seemed to be under pressure ? Does that means its noisy / being accessed frequently ? I do find from time to time there is quite a bit of disk access but it's fairly rare and machine performance is good.

There is a cheap utility on app store recommended which clears disk space, to be honest it doesnt seem to do much except delete safari downloads (so check you don't need any) and a few system logs etc but it might be worth a try for approx $2. E-mail logs and old attachments can take up a lot of space too.
 
Jambalaya said:
There is a cheap utility on app store recommended which clears disk space, to be honest it doesnt seem to do much except delete safari downloads (so check you don't need any) and a few system logs etc but it might be worth a try for approx $2. E-mail logs and old attachments can take up a lot of space too.
Click to expand...
Unless a drive is almost full, there is no performance benefit in deleting files off the drive. Having data stored on the drive has no impact on performance. Unless you're troubleshooting a particular problem, it's not wise to delete system logs or other system files, as those can be needed in future troubleshooting. If the goal is to free space, deleting user data or moving it to an external drive is the best approach.
 
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