rodion15

Q: Is replacing a hard drive for an SSD always worth it?

Yesterday I replaced the hard drive for an SSD in my Mac Mini late 2014 (mine is the lowest range of the latest mac minis, with 4GB non-upgradable RAM), I had to take apart the whole machine, which wasn't easy at all. I measured the transfer speed with Blackmagic Disk Speed test and found the speed increase a meager 50MBps (from 98 MBps to 149 MBps). I was a little disappointed. I expected a much bigger increase. I hope I'm wrong somehow.

Would the speed be much higher with a more powerful processor or more memory?

Posted on Apr 30, 2016 4:34 PM

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Q: Is replacing a hard drive for an SSD always worth it?

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  • by Rudegar,

    Rudegar Rudegar Apr 30, 2016 5:10 PM in response to rodion15
    Level 7 (28,566 points)
    Apple TV
    Apr 30, 2016 5:10 PM in response to rodion15

    disc transfer speed don't depend on memory amount or cpu speed

  • by steve359,

    steve359 steve359 Apr 30, 2016 6:51 PM in response to rodion15
    Level 6 (14,032 points)
    Apr 30, 2016 6:51 PM in response to rodion15

    HD-to-SSD change has other effects.  HDs are spinning platters with a read/write head seeking much of the time.  SSDs have faster seek times because of direct addressing.  Also the "swap file" that used to be moved to/from in addition to the R/W-head seeks is changed to direct-access R/W of an SSD.

     

    Startup should be faster, and opening applications should be faster.

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass May 1, 2016 1:22 AM in response to rodion15
    Level 10 (188,811 points)
    Desktops
    May 1, 2016 1:22 AM in response to rodion15

    Something seems wrong.

    What SSD did you install?

    What does system profiler shows about the dis and the disk control?

    Go to SATA/SATA Express in profiler

    OS X: About System Information and System Profiler - Apple Support

    and post a screens shot when the controller is selected

    How to take a screenshot on your Mac - Apple Support

  • by VikingOSX,

    VikingOSX VikingOSX May 2, 2016 5:51 AM in response to rodion15
    Level 7 (20,849 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 2, 2016 5:51 AM in response to rodion15

    A current third-party SATA 3 SSD should be showing over 500MB/s read and write performance. As has been noted, something is not correct with your getting the results that you posted. Depending on the brand, it may require a firmware update for improved performance, and/or OS X compatibility.

  • by rodion15,

    rodion15 rodion15 May 4, 2016 2:52 AM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Desktops
    May 4, 2016 2:52 AM in response to lllaass

    Screen Shot 2016-05-04 at 10.45.50.png

    Screen Shot 2016-05-04 at 10.46.06.png

    DiskSpeedTest.png

    here're the screenshots, thanks for your help

  • by woodmeister50,

    woodmeister50 woodmeister50 May 4, 2016 4:11 AM in response to rodion15
    Level 5 (5,517 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 4, 2016 4:11 AM in response to rodion15

    This doesn't really solve your problem, but as a reference, I have a Kingston v300

    SSDNow drive installed in my 2011 Mini Server.  I get reads ranging from 300-450

    megabytes/second writes ranging from 180-250 megabytes/second.  One thing, these

    are not the speediest SSDs on the market, but are faster than an HDD.

     

    Something to note, running the speed test on an active boot volume (depending on the app)

    can give wildly variable results as it will typically be competing with other system accesses.

    I ran the test multiple tomes to get the range that I reported.

     

    If possible, you may want to create a clone to an external drive, boot to it, and then redo the test.

  • by rodion15,

    rodion15 rodion15 May 4, 2016 5:04 AM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Desktops
    May 4, 2016 5:04 AM in response to lllaass

    The SSD is a 240GB Kingston SSDNow300

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass May 4, 2016 6:54 AM in response to rodion15
    Level 10 (188,811 points)
    Desktops
    May 4, 2016 6:54 AM in response to rodion15

    The link speed is 6 GB/sec which is correct..

    You either have a bad drive or as woodmiester said running the test on a boot drive may be the cause of the low speeds.

  • by rodion15,

    rodion15 rodion15 May 5, 2016 4:23 AM in response to woodmeister50
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Desktops
    May 5, 2016 4:23 AM in response to woodmeister50

    Thanks mate.  Well, I ran the test as you say also, from an external hard drive and the internal SSD as target, same result.  These are the specs of the mac mini:

    Model Name: Mac mini

     

    Model Name: Mac mini

    Model Identifier: Macmini7,1

      Processor Name: Intel Core i5

      Processor Speed: 1.4 GHz

      Number of Processors: 1

      Total Number of Cores: 2

      L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

      L3 Cache: 3 MB

      Memory: 4 GB

      Boot ROM Version: MM71.0220.B06

      SMC Version (system): 2.24f32

  • by rodion15,

    rodion15 rodion15 May 5, 2016 4:48 AM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Desktops
    May 5, 2016 4:48 AM in response to lllaass

    sorry what do you mean "woodmiester"?.  I tried running the test off an external usb bootable Yosemite hard drive, same result.

  • by Mac User #330250,

    Mac User #330250 Mac User #330250 May 5, 2016 10:51 AM in response to rodion15
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Classic Mac OS
    May 5, 2016 10:51 AM in response to rodion15

    As already mentioned something is wrong. You should try to update the firmware if a newer one is available. If you cannot get it faster you should return it and/or get a warranty replacement.

     

    BTW, you should enable TRIM. In Terminal, issue the command "sudo trimforce enable". You will have to enter your password. Afterwards TRIM should be enabled also on 3rd-party SSD drives, which you should see in System Profiler as "TRIM Support: Yes".

  • by rodion15,

    rodion15 rodion15 May 9, 2016 11:14 PM in response to Mac User #330250
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Desktops
    May 9, 2016 11:14 PM in response to Mac User #330250

    I enabled TRIM, but it did nothing.  Thanks your your answer.