Q: Mac Mini Late 2012 hard drive upgrade.
I7 2.6ghz 16gb ram...
Had Fusion drive from new, found that once 128gb ssd was full there was no real benefit to fusion. I decided (possible foolishly) to do an upgrade.
Installed 500gb Samsung evo 850 ssd, wd 1tb for storage. (no fusion)
Did clean install of El Capitan with bootable usb drive. All good so far except noticed mini getting hot, exhaust fan not running !
took off cover, checked connector, it was properly seated, spun fan and it continued running.
All then seemed fine completed install and got replacement fan as precaution and fitted it.
Over three weeks a couple of other weird events, two or three times at boot, progress bar would get to half way, display blank out and nothing more happen. Force shutdown , restart and all ok again.
The exhaust fan has stopped when the mini has gone to sleep a couple of times, restarting has solved sometimes. Have reset PRAM numerous times.
Over last three days fan has stopped at boot several times, resetting SMC seems to resolve the issue. All connectors are good. I have monitored with Imenus and more recently THPro, when the fan stalls it is reported to be running at 650rpm!
I have searched about this problem, one person found that removing original drive on mac mini stopped fan altogether, replacing it with the original 'apple drive' and and the fan works fine! that does not make sense to me but the Samsung made drive that was the 128gb ssd part of my original fusion was firmware coded to say it was 'Apple'
The Evo 850 does not report a temperature through smart I don't see this would cause such issues though?
Not sure where I go with this, I could replace the original 'Apple drives' and see what occurs, at least I could forget about a possible gross over heat. Should I reinstall and make a fusion drive (can't see this would make any difference)
I took all static precautions, took my time replacing the drives and it went smoothly without any hitch..
If anyone can suggest anything I would be very appreciative.
Sorry this post is so long!
Mac mini (Late 2012), OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), Storage outgrown!
Posted on Feb 22, 2016 12:33 PM