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Q: What's the expected hard disk speed for Mac Mini?

Hi all, I just bought my first Mac for use in my personal photo studio, a refurbed 2011 Mac Mini i5 2.5ghz. As I was setting up external drives and putting the mini through its paces, I ran a disk benchmark (BlackMagic Disk Speed Test) and got some pretty poor scores.

 

My mini's internal drive hits roughly 40MB/s for both sequential read and sequential write. Am I correct in thinking that this is poor performance even for a 5400 rpm drive? The drive is mostly full; there are 50GB free. Would you recommend that I address this with Applecare?

 

Here are two other Minis (same 5400 rpm drive) hitting much higher marks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2KOAUAqYiw#t=1m41s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPksGswN8Uk#t=0m18s

Mac mini (Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.2), 2.5 GHz, 8GB ram, 500GB 5400 rpm

Posted on Feb 4, 2012 9:51 AM

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Q: What's the expected hard disk speed for Mac Mini?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Allan Eckert,

    Allan Eckert Allan Eckert Feb 4, 2012 9:55 AM in response to iMapple
    Level 9 (53,742 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 4, 2012 9:55 AM in response to iMapple

    I would recommend that if you want better performance to delete or move some data off of that disk.

     

    For a 90% full disk that performance doesn't sound bad at all.

     

    Allan

  • by iMapple,

    iMapple iMapple Feb 4, 2012 10:06 AM in response to Allan Eckert
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Feb 4, 2012 10:06 AM in response to Allan Eckert

    Thanks for the response, Allan. I was preparing to move most of the data to an external RAID setup when I ran that benchmark. It made me think twice about spending several hours setting up the system if in the end the system drive needs replacement.

     

    I'll move some data and see if the speed improves.

     

    ps - One of the torx screws inside the mini case is misaligned. Noticed this when installing new ram. I guess that's making me a bit paranoid that the refurb process didn't go smoothly ;-)

  • by iMapple,

    iMapple iMapple Feb 4, 2012 3:27 PM in response to Allan Eckert
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Feb 4, 2012 3:27 PM in response to Allan Eckert

    Well, the drive is now 80% free (399GB free) and it's still topping out around 40 MB/s. Any thoughts?

     

    Screen Shot 2012-02-04 at 5.42.29 PM.png

  • by Kimberella of Albuquerque,

    Kimberella of Albuquerque Kimberella of Albuquerque Oct 9, 2015 3:44 PM in response to iMapple
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Oct 9, 2015 3:44 PM in response to iMapple

    No one apparently disputes that apple behaves like our mouths when drawing liquid through a straw. I think their plan with the minis is to eliminate us for good as potential future customers if we cannot afford the MBP's and 48 inch iMacs.

  • by den.thed,

    den.thed den.thed Oct 9, 2015 5:17 PM in response to iMapple
    Level 7 (27,639 points)
    Oct 9, 2015 5:17 PM in response to iMapple

    You need to put an SSD into it.

     

    I put PNY 240 GB CS1100 Series SSDs in both my 2010 and 2012 Mac Mini's.

    DiskSpeedTest.png

    Both are now rockets compared to when they had HDDs. Plus both startup from chime to working desktop in 7 seconds.

     

    Adding that those numbers are a little off, because I'm currentlly run Safari, iTunes, Photos and backing up to a USB 3.0 external HDD using CarbonCopyCloner. After a startup with nothing running, Disk Speed Test will report almost 300 Write and 425 Read.

     

    For DYI, have a look at > https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mac_Mini_Unibody

    and/or the DIY videos at > http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/mac-mini/

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Oct 10, 2015 3:05 AM in response to iMapple
    Level 10 (189,435 points)
    Desktops
    Oct 10, 2015 3:05 AM in response to iMapple

    Open System Profiler

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203001

    and go to SATA/SATA Express entry and select the HD. What is the link speed and negotiated link speed?

  • by woodmeister50,

    woodmeister50 woodmeister50 Oct 10, 2015 3:42 AM in response to iMapple
    Level 5 (5,589 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 10, 2015 3:42 AM in response to iMapple

    For 5400 RPM drives I would expect a little better.  FWIW, my 2011

    Mini Server's HDD (I have an SSD for boot volume) was getting

    about 75-80 MB and it is a 7200 RPM, which is about as good as it

    gets for a 2.5" HDD.

     

    Have you tried setting up an external boot drive and then run the test on the internal?

    It may be possible that running the test on the boot drive, from the boot drive may not

    give good results.