I am running a 2010 Mac mini with High Sierra on it on an Seagate Barracuda 500GB drive. If I do a cold reboot, it goes through the boot process pretty quickly and successfully. However on warm reboots it does not and ends up giving me the gray circle with a gray backwards slash icon. I know that large capacity HDD have had problems but this is only 500GB. This unit had a 250GB Crucial SSD in it with absolutely no problems for a number of years. Any suggestions other than replace the SSD?
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Seagate SSD in a 2010 Mac mini OK to cold boot but not warm reboot
- Thread starter bigsnake49
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That's weird. But remember that the 2010 macs only have a link speed of 3gbs as I recall. Not sure why the heat would affect things but make sure the SSD has a slower link speed. Check out OWC's SSDs. Do you have the 2010 with the DVD drive?
AFAIK this is irrelevant. SATA speeds are always negociated to the lowest speed of the 2 (= port vs drive) .
So e.g. a SATA III drive in a SATA II slot works fine , speed = SATA II.
A SATA II drive in a SATA III slot works fine , speed= SATA II
There are SSD brands/models that are known for issues running a Mac OS.
Not sure about the Seagate....
Anyway, I'm pretty sure the issue is not heat related.
@bigsnake49 : you could erase and reformat the drive and install a clean OS to find out if the issue is hard /software related.
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I have erased/reformatted the drive and installed a clean OS and the problem persists. It has to be the drive itself. I had absolutely no problems with a 256GB Crucial there before.
Sorry to hear that!
Than I'd get for example a Samsung 850/860 EVO ( the QVO series is known for issues in Mac OS) or a Crucial.
It wasn't irrelevant on the 2009 Mac Minis. Only the old Crucial SSDs from that time period would work without the 3gs link speed reverting to 1.5gbs, rendering the SSD speed vs HDD speed practically nil.
This might be a TRIM issue on High Sierra in the 2010 in any case.
Ok, a 2010 has a SATA II bus. SATA III SSDs have no problem negotiating backward.
This is not a TRIM issue but sudo trimforce enable should be run in Terminal on any Mac booting from a SATA SSD after Yosemite 10.10.4. TRIM is normally twice as fast as the drive's Garbage Collection utility in the firmware for making cells accept new data. TRIM has been part of the MacOS since 10.7 Lion. Before 10.10.4 that command will not work but there are other ways.
SSDs go bad and many do. Time to replace this one. If not under warranty, time to buy another. The Crucial MX500 has a 5 warranty and is a good bang for the buck. $189.99 on Amazon for 2TB.
Do not buy an 850 EVO. Those were discontinued years ago in favor of the 860 EVO and 870 EVO and any old stock is pretty expensive now. For a 2010 Mini, either the 860 or 870 will be fine but there's no advantage over the MX500. As long as the SSD has 3D NAND and a 5 year warranty, it's ok to buy on price.
I agree on the 860 QVO which does not have 3D NAND. You don't want these for System drives on a Mac. Also has only a 3 year warranty and costs the same as the MX500.
While you're replacing the SSD in that Mini, also replace the PRAM/NVRAM battery. The original is a BR2032 but a CR2032 is fine if there's an SSD in there.
Crucial has great warranty support (so does Samsung). I had a few MX300 SSDs fail before their 3 year warranty expired, filled out the paperwork online and mailed them to Idaho. I got a message that the 300 was discontinued so they were sending me MX500s. I was good with that.
Can confirm MX500 and Crucial support.
Question: Are you running any so-called disk maintenance or optimization utilities on your SSD?
If so, stop it. These can/will shorten the life of your drive by a lot. None of them are necessary. The good ones such as TechTool Pro will refuse to run these harmful routines on your SSD while the crapware will only pop up a message saying that they're not recommended.
Question: Are you running any so-called disk maintenance or optimization utilities on your SSD?
If so, stop it. These can/will shorten the life of your drive by a lot. None of them are necessary. The good ones such as TechTool Pro will refuse to run these harmful routines on your SSD while the crapware will only pop up a message saying that they're not recommended.
I've come across several reports about the 870 EVO causing issues in e.g. MacPro 5,1 and MBP 2010....
Mmmmmm...
I've been using 860 EVOs and MX500s in 2008–2010 iMacs and Minis without problems — not once, not ever.
This thread talks about the 860 QVO which is not recommended and the 870.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/caution-troubles-with-870-evo-drives-on-cmp-5-1.2287656/
The OP states he has used many 860 EVOs and I've lost count o the number I've installed in SATA and SATA II Macs. I suspect that I know what he's doing wrong with the 870 installation but this isn't the thread for that.
I've not tried an 870 EVO, however—costs $100 more than an MX500. Samsung does claim to be backwards compatible with SATA and SATA II and I see no reason to doubt them.
"Type Interface
SATA 6 Gb/s Interface, compatible with SATA 3 Gb/s & SATA 1.5 Gb/s interface"
870 EVO
Same here:
I've been using 850/860 EVOs for many , many years without one single hickup ever...
Actually that was the exact thread I read
I have absolutely no clue what's changed between the 860>870 EVO....
I've been using 850/860 EVOs for many , many years without one single hickup ever...
Actually that was the exact thread I read
I have absolutely no clue what's changed between the 860>870 EVO....
I suspect nothing significant. My bets are on how the MacOS was installed and that all the armchair experting is barking up the wrong tree.
Still, with a 2010, buy on price and replace the battery. There is a potential issue with the MacOS install but it can usually be avoided and the workaround is easy if you run into it.
If you download and run the MacOS from a System drive running the same MacOS, there is almost never a problem. The new drive can be mounted in a $16 USB dock from Amazon. When the install is done, it will boot and want to run Migration Assistant—let it. When finished, open the Mini and pop the new drive in and replace the battery. It should just boot. Easy. As soon as it boots ok, shut down and replace the cover. Now boot again and go through your network and iCloud settings with the new drive. After you’re done, it will ask to inherit your Time Machine settings—click yes.
Once everything is set up and running, open Terminal and run sudo trimforce enable and hit the Enter or Return key. Enter your Admin password when done.
You may notice I made no mention of clone ware, booting from a USB stick and installing the MacOS from there or using the Recovery Partition.
If the old drive crashed completely or you installed the new one without running the installer from a working system, you may find that an older Mac will not boot. When that happens, you may need to boot into the Recovery Partition of a USB installer, fire up Terminal and set the clock to a date that the installer will accept, Opton-booting into the Installer and running it from there (the clock will reset itself when the new System drive boots). Fun, huh? Drove me frickin’ nuts the first time I encountered that on a 2011 iMac (running the installer from a System drive on this machine was not possible).
Somehow I'm getting the impression that you adressed this post to the OP : I'm not
Anyway, thx for the info, running into issues with an outdated installer etc sounds familiar, I've been there too!
My question was specifically referring to your suspect of the issues with the 870 EVO.
The issue in the afore mentioned thread is not the install itself but e.g. what happens after cold/warm boot etc
"Could you elaborate this a little?"
I did.
There is way too little actual info and way too much armchair guessing in that thread about the EVO 870.
With the other threads I've found on the subject, it's quite clear that almost no one knows what they're doing, especially as some of them conflate the 870 and 970. In any case, none of that applies to a 2010 Mini.
If someone wants to send me an 870 EVO, I'll throw it into one of the Minis I have around here and see; I bet it works for me but I don't know what steps I'd have to take.
In any case, since the issue is a new SSD in a 2010 Mini and the MX500 is $100 less, I see no reason to continue discussion about the 870.
I did.
There is way too little actual info and way too much armchair guessing in that thread about the EVO 870.
With the other threads I've found on the subject, it's quite clear that almost no one knows what they're doing, especially as some of them conflate the 870 and 970. In any case, none of that applies to a 2010 Mini.
If someone wants to send me an 870 EVO, I'll throw it into one of the Minis I have around here and see; I bet it works for me but I don't know what steps I'd have to take.
In any case, since the issue is a new SSD in a 2010 Mini and the MX500 is $100 less, I see no reason to continue discussion about the 870.
This is a list of assumptions and still no further definition of your "suspect" about the cause of the issue.
A lot of words, but not saying anything...
Looks like you are the one who's armchair guessing.
BTW: in the afore mentioned thread you stated : "QVO is not recommended for System drives where the number of writes is many, many multiples that of a storage drive."
That makes your statements not only a bunch of assumptions but also contradictory....
What a waste of time even reading it.
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I forgot about the hard drive/optical drive sensors in the 2010 mini. Are they attached properly?
Yes, I had to buy a replacement for one of them. When I say cold boot, it does not mean allowing the drive to cool down . In my case it means that I turn the computer off and then Immediately turn it back on.
Probably the drive is failing. In this day and age, I would never put anything but an SSD in a mac mini (or any vintage macs) if I could help it. Mechanical drives run too hot and die. Try finding a Firecuda Seagate, at least.
The drive is an SSD. I should have stuck with the Mx-500. They never gave me any problems. This drive was on sale and I did not investigate it thoroughly as far as comparability.