I have the 1.4GHZ i.5/4 gb/500GB hard drive model. I do not know how to tell if it has a fusion drive. Can I add an SSD to this and if so, what do I need besides the SSD? It runs so slow. I hear the ssd can speed it up.
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Your system has only one drive currently (500 GB HDD) it is not a Fusion Drive which is where two discreet physical drives (HD & SSD) are combined to be a single logical disk.
Frankly, I suspect your real issue here is your system's HD needs some TLC vs upgrading the drive.
While upgrading your current HD to a SSD is possible adding a second drive will be difficult as you'll need to use Apple's proprietary blade drive and replace the drive frame to gain the needed connection to support it.
Lets see if cleaning things up regains the zip!
OK, to start with you should make a backup onto an external drive. Once done you'll want to create a bootable USB thumb drive (16 GB), download if you haven't already the OS installer and prep up the USB drive. Make sure you can boot up your system using it by holding the Option key when the system boots. I also recommend you copy to the USB drive the OS installer.
You'll want to run Disk Utility from the USB drive run Disk First Aid, just to make sure your drive is in good shape. Next delete as much junk as you can you really want to have 1/4 of the drive left free. Next you'll want to clear out the old cache & log files which build up over time. I like this tool which makes it easy: Disk Doctor.
If your drive was quite full you likely have a lot of file fragmentation. You'll need a tool like this to finish things off: Drive Genius
The only thing I would do here is look at boosting the RAM up if you still only have 4 GB in the system. 8 to 12 GB should be enough.
Let us know how it goes.
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Hi Dan,
Thanks for the response.
I know I cannot upgrade the RAM in this model, or at least I was told it was permanent in the late 2014 model. This model seems to always run slow, I get a lot of beach balls as things are loading.
If I upgrade/replace the HDD to 120 GB SSD will that make it run faster?
I will also try cleaning.
My wife has used it for her masters degree and programs such as numbers or excel or terribly slow. She's run some SPSS program on there as well. I
Ahh! I forgot this a soldered RAM model.
Lets see how cleaning things up go first. While a SSD is faster than a HDD I don't think thats your issue presently. If you do go with a a 2.5" SSD you should go with something larger than 120 GB. I would go with a 512 GB at least here. You see when your system is lean on RAM it uses the drive for virtual RAM and paging if the app can leverage it. So a bigger SSD is really need here more so.
Hey Dan,
I have tried the cleaning, but to be honest, only 36gb of the 500 have been used. I just can't believe the slowness of this comp.
If I put in a 512gb ssd, as a replacement for the hard drive, will that indeed make this run quicker?
Thoughts?
mmm.... This is a tough nut to crack ;-{
Quickness is such a vague term: Booting up? Running a application? Saving files?
A SSD will offer some improvement basically the drive I/O side of performance. Which gets into the Boot up and saving or copying files. The bigger issue is application performance the limitation of RAM and the CPU's limits you here.
I'm still not sure what your issue is here as the performance should be what you remember when you got the system. In your question above I posted a link to EveryMac which offers the specs and performance benchmarks. If you ran the same benchmarks your numbers should be very close. You could give that a try.
Clearly space on the drive is not your issue here. But you still could have a drive thats going south. So do run Disk Utility as I outlined to make sure.
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I dont see it being an issue, You can find tutorials on youtube and on the IFixIt site itself.
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Very True! Just not the easiest swap out. But, the underlying question was why the system slowed down.
I just like to know how deep the water is before I jump in ;-} Here's the IFIXIT guide: Mac Mini Late 2014 Hard Drive Replacement
I wouldn't have worded it better @dan, but the base questions is still there. Why did the device slow down. Well this could be caused by many things. Buy I would try an ssd if I have one. Maybe there is a failure of the on board ram. But I can't be sure without being on front of the item
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Yes, you can speed up your system with a SSD, but the ssd needs to be your main drive. You can do that by connecting this ssd to where your old one was. use this guide to help. The ssd will only work as fast external storage if it is not your main drive. Once you remove the old HDD and put the ssd in, you can use the old HDD in a case for extra storage. Mac mini eind 2014 Vervanging van de harde schijf
OK, I've got this all figured out. Buy a PNY 240 GB SSD from Amazon.com (free shipping). Use the guide from ifixit to put this SSD where the hdd is. Then buy the Anker USB hdd/SSD enclosure from Amazon. Put your old hard drive in there.
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@pccheese - George, the speed of I/O of a drive is based on the interface. If I have two SATA ports it makes no difference which port I used to host the SSD and the HD, both are technically the same. In this model things are a bit different as we have two different I/O interfaces: A custom PCIe x2 (4.0 Gb/s) and a Standard 2.5" SATA III (6.0 Gb/s). But don't let the I/O number confuse you! the PCIe SSD is much faster than the slow HD and you still need to add it the protocol conversion within SATA as well.
So, the speed difference has nothing to do with an external drive when comparing the two internal connections. If one is using a Thunderbolt RAIDed HD or SSD array the I/O throughput it is even faster! Yes, a USB as well as a FireWire drive would be slower if that is were you where heading.
Here's some numbers: Theoretical vs. Actual Bandwidth: PCI Express and Thunderbolt. While this is somewhat dated today with PCIe x4 lane & Thunderbolt 2. And now USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 things are even faster!
Dude, I know about computers. I built the one I'm using to type type this with, among others. That pci-e x2 is useless, unless for the HDD, but I wouldn't know how to adapt it. And, on top of that, most modern sata III ssd's max out at 560 MB/s due to the slower sata interface. If you where to use a 4 Gb/s interface (pci-e x2), it would slow the ssd down to about 380 MB/s. So, by replacing the internal hdd, with a ssd and putting the old hdd in a usb 3.0 case both drives will operate at maximum speed of themselves.
@pccheese - George you'll need to do a bit more reading ;-}
There are no PCIe HDD drives only SSD's. As to data throughput the speed of the highway is only one facet. In truth the data flow from the device is the thing one needs to focus on (how fast one can race down that highway) HD's are slow SSD's are faster.
So yes, the PCI'e bandwidth is less than the SATA III bandwidth (as I pointed out). But, a PCIe SSD will saturate more of the available bandwidth of the PCIe connection whereas a SATA III SSD (or HD) is unable to saturate the bandwidth of the SATA III connection.
Take a look at this review: Not the upgrade we were hoping for: The 2014 Mac Mini reviewed. Jump down to the 128 GB SSD tests. Here you can see the difference between the interfaces (SATA & PCIe).
I think we're going much to far into the bit's and bytes here for the OP on different choices of drive storage.
The issue still remains why the system slowed down. Is there something with the drive or something else here?
I understand all that. I happen to be one of the few individuals who do. As I clearly stated in my last comment, "That pci-e x2 is useless, unless for the HDD, but I wouldn't know how to adapt it." Adapt it. I wouldn't know how to do that because it is currently impossible. And it is useless because it would make more sense to use the sata III instead. And this is between you and me and not the op. It almost always makes more sense to use the fastest connection. And I don't know what is going on here that where not in agreement about using sata. What does the PCI-e even have to do with anything?
Oh! I see now... I didn't know that the pci-e was in use by the os drive. All right. OK. Maybe this guy has one without that SSD, and that is why it is so slow. Yeah, thank you for you enlightenment on this subject. I'm a Windows/Android and Intel/Nvidia guy. Intel/Nvidia.
So, are programs stored on the SSD or hdd?
Just like a Windows system you can run apps from any drive, But the temp & cache files will reside on the boot drive. So it does make sense to use as fast a drive and I/O connection here for the boot drive.
As an example we use Mac Pro's for some very heavy CAD and video production, we use an external thunderbolt 2 RAID'ed SSD set. As the connection is faster and the available space is larger than the built-in SSD system.
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Your systems specs: Mac mini 1.4 GHz i5 (Late 2014)
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