2014 Mac mini - replacing the hybrid drive with an SSD

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2014 Mac mini - replacing the hybrid drive with an SSD

Hello all,

2014 Mac mini - 2.8 GHz i5 - 8GB RAM - Hybrid drive (ssd + 1TB hdd)

Recently this machine has begun to show a spinning ball for just everything, despite regular use of Onyx and about 280GB free drive space. The SSD temperature goes up to 60°C - 65°C quite often (istat) during clone backup and other file copying. I'm just mentally making plans for a possible failing drive. OWC makes these drives, but thinking of general speed, I am also wondering about replacing both the SSD and HDD with a single 2TB SSD in the hard-drive bay and leaving the original SSD slot vacant.

It looks a simple job, but just checking - is there some reason why this is not a good idea? Very grateful for any contributions.

Thanks, Dave

Mac mini, macOS 10.14

Posted on Mar 18, 2020 3:15 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

63,578 points

Mar 18, 2020 4:52 PM in response to David Griffiths

The original Apple SSD is just a PCIe SATA SSD so replacing the original hard drive with a standard SATA SSD should retain the same performance you have now. Of course if you install an OWC Aura SSD in place of the Apple SSD, then you will get a performance improvement since the OWC Aura SSDs are much faster NVMe drives. The computer must already have macOS 10.13+ installed so the computer has the necessary system firmware to support the OWC Aura SSD (and you must always use macOS 10.13+ with it).

Chances are your hard drive is the part which is failing and not your Apple SSD. To check the health of the SSD and hard drive run DriveDX and post the health report for each drive here (two separate reports) using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

BTW, these SSDs can get very hot during long drive operations and it does not indicate the SSD is failing. When the SSD hits 70C or there abouts the SSD will throttle itself to lower the temperature of the drive.

If the drives are good, then you may want to check for possible software issues by running EtreCheck and posting the report here using the "Additional Text" icon.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

63,578 points

Mar 20, 2020 6:56 PM in response to David Griffiths

The "Load Cycle Count" on the hard drive is way past its maximum expected value which means the drive is wearing out. The SSD in the Fusion Drive setup is masking the drive's poor health and worn out state. The hard drive could very well be contributing to some of the problems. Even if the hard drive is working Ok now, it won't be for very much longer. I would suggest disabling "Put hard disk to sleep when possible" which is located in the Energy Saver System Preferences as it may help to extend the drive's life a bit.

The SSD appears to be Ok.

As far as the software you should uninstall Webroot, Clean My Mac, and Virus Barrier by following the developers' instructions. Anit-virus and cleaning apps are not needed on a Mac and usually cause more problems than they solve. Plus they impact system performance. Even if you want to use an anti-virus app you should only ever install one app since they will be competing with each other making the system even more slow and unstable. MalwareBytes is acceptable if you feel the need to use it as MalwareBytes is the only one which really works on a Mac.

Your computer is also running out of memory so uninstalling those items should help somewhat. I would suggest disabling the automatic launching of some other items to help free up some memory as well. There are some other apps I am unsure about, but uninstalling the AV & cleaning apps is a good start to see how much it improves your computer. If you still have problems, then run EtreCheck again after removing those items mentioned and post it here so that some other more knowledgeable contributors can comment on the report.

I would highly recommend re-enabling the Security updates to help keep your system safe. Security updates should rarely interfere with your system or apps.

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Answer 3

Mar 21, 2020 1:13 PM in response to HWTech

Thank-you very much for all the help I have received. It is way more than I was ever expecting when I posted the original question. I'll go out Monday and get a 1TB SSD to replace the original spinning disc. On the software side I'll also implement the recommendations. I don't use the AV software, but then logically it doesn't need to be there. Thanks also for the tip about the euro-store for OWC.

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Answer 4

Mar 20, 2020 4:02 PM in response to HWTech

DriveDxReport_APPLE HDD

DriveDxReport_APPLE SSD

### SYSTEM INFORMATION ### Report Timestamp : 20 March 2020 22:30:30 GMT+1 Report Timestamp (ISO 8601 format) : 2020-03-20T22:30:30 Application Name : DriveDx Application Version : 1.9.1.670 Application SubBuild : 0 Application Edition : Standalone Application Website : https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx DriveDx Knowledge Base Revision : 11/11 Computer Name : SuperCool iMac Host Name : SuperCool-iMac Computer Model : Macmini7,1 OS Boot Time : 2020-03-16T22:04:21 Time Since Boot : 4 days 00h 26m 09s OS Name : macOS OS Version : 10.14.6 OS Build : 18G3020 OS Kernel Version : Darwin 18.7.0 SAT SMART Driver Version : N/A ATA Command Support Tolerance : verypermissive N of drives in report : 1 ### DRIVE 1 OF 1 ### Last Checked : 20 March 2020 22:26:58 GMT+1 Last Checked (ISO 8601 format) : 2020-03-20T22:26:58 Advanced SMART Status : OK Overall Health Rating : GOOD 100% SSD Lifetime Left Indicator : GOOD 100% Issues found : 0 Serial Number : S1K3NYAF909860 WWN Id : 5 002538 655584d30 Volumes : Macintosh HD Device Path : /dev/disk0 Total Capacity : 121.3 GB (121,332,826,112 Bytes) Model Family : Apple (Samsung-based) SSDs Model : APPLE SSD SM0128F Firmware Version : UXM2JA1Q Drive Type : SSD Power On Time : 23,933 hours (33 months 7 days 5 hours) Power Cycles Count : 29,062 Current Power Cycle Time : 96.4 hours === DEVICE CAPABILITIES === S.M.A.R.T. support enabled : yes DriveDx Active Diagnostic Config : Apple (Samsung-based) e/f-series SSDs config [ssd.apple.samsung.ef] Sector Logical Size : 512 Sector Physical Size : 4096 Physical Interconnect : PCI Logical Protocol : SATA Removable : no Ejectable : no ATA Version : ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4c SATA Version : SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s) I/O Path : IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0@0/AppleACPIPCI/RP06@1C,5/IOPP/SSD0@0/AppleAHCI/PRT0@0/IOAHCIDevice@0/AppleAHCIDiskDriver/IOAHCIBlockStorageDevice Attributes Data Structure Revision : 40 SMART Command Transport (SCT) flags : 0x0 SCT Status supported : no SCT Feature Control supported : no SCT Data Table supported : no Error logging capabilities : 0x1 Self-tests supported : yes Offline Data Collection capabilities : 0x5f Offline Data Collection status : 0x0 Auto Offline Data Collection flags : 0x0 [Known device ]: yes [Drive State Flags ]: 0x0 === CURRENT POWER CYCLE STATISTICS === Data Read : 593.0 GB Data Written : 253.5 GB Data Read/Write Ratio : 2.34 Average Throughput (Read) : 39.3 MB/s Average Throughput (Write) : 87.0 MB/s Operations (Read) : 38,125,075 Operations (Write) : 10,775,735 Operations Read/Write Ratio : 4 Throughput per operation (Read) : 16.3 KB/Op Throughput per operation (Write) : 24.7 KB/Op Latency Time (Read) : 0 ns Latency Time (Write) : 0 ns Retries (Read) : 0 Retries (Write) : 0 Errors (Read) : 0 Errors (Write) : 0 === PROBLEMS SUMMARY === Failed Indicators (life-span / pre-fail) : 0 (0 / 0) Failing Indicators (life-span / pre-fail) : 0 (0 / 0) Warnings (life-span / pre-fail) : 0 (0 / 0) Recently failed Self-tests (Short / Full) : 0 (0 / 0) I/O Error Count : 0 (0 / 0) === IMPORTANT HEALTH INDICATORS === ID NAME RAW VALUE STATUS 5 Retired Block Count 0 100% OK 173 Wear Leveling Count 0x340048303DF 62.0% OK 175 Host Writes MiB 48,642,499 (46.4 TB) 99.0% OK 192 Unsafe Shutdown Count 304 99.0% OK 197 Current Pending Block Count 0 100% OK 199 UDMA CRC Error Count 0 100% OK === TEMPERATURE INFORMATION (CELSIUS) === Current Temperature : 50 Power Cycle Min Temperature : 50 Power Cycle Max Temperature : 51 Lifetime Min Temperature : 50 Lifetime Max Temperature : 51 Recommended Min Temperature : 5 Recommended Max Temperature : 65 Temperature Min Limit : 5 Temperature Max Limit : 70 === DRIVE HEALTH INDICATORS === ID | NAME | TYPE | UPDATE | RAW VALUE | VALUE | THRESHOLD | WORST | LAST MODIFIED | STATUS 1 Raw Read Error Rate Life-span online 0x0 200 0 200 - 100% OK 5 Retired Block Count Pre-fail online 0 100 0 100 - 100% OK 9 Power On Hours Life-span online 23,933 95 0 95 - 95.0% OK 12 Power Cycle Count Life-span online 29,062 71 0 71 - 71.0% OK 169 Total Bad Block Count Pre-fail online 0xC50A400780 253 10 253 - 100% OK 173 Wear Leveling Count Life-span online 0x340048303DF 162 100 162 - 62.0% OK 174 Host Reads MiB Life-span online 79,117,113 (75.5 TB) 99 0 99 - 99.0% OK 175 Host Writes MiB Life-span online 48,642,499 (46.4 TB) 99 0 99 - 99.0% OK 192 Unsafe Shutdown Count Life-span online 304 99 0 99 - 99.0% OK 194 Temperature (Celsius) Life-span online 50 50 30 50 - 50.0% OK 197 Current Pending Block Count Life-span online 0 100 0 100 - 100% OK 199 UDMA CRC Error Count Life-span online 0 200 0 200 - 100% OK 240 Vendor Specific Life-span online 0x0 100 0 100 - 100% OK === DRIVE ERROR LOG === error log is empty === DRIVE SELF-TEST LOG === self-test log is empty === DEVICE STATISTICS === [0x01] General Statistics (revision 2) 0x08 Lifetime Power-on Resets : 29,062 0x10 Power-on Hours : 23,933 hours 0x18 Logical Sectors Written : 99,619,839,513 (46.4 TB) 0x20 Number of Write Commands : 1,582,393,640 0x28 Logical Sectors Read : 162,031,849,345 (75.5 TB) 0x30 Number of Read Commands : 5,103,465,697 [0x04] General Errors Statistics (revision 1) 0x08 Number of Reported Uncorrectable Errors : 0 0x10 Resets Between Cmd Accept. and Compl. : 0 [0x06] Transport Statistics (revision 1) 0x08 Number of Hardware Resets : 0 0x10 Number of ASR Events : 0 0x18 Number of Interface CRC Errors : 0 [0x07] Solid State Drive Statistics (revision 1) 0x08 Percentage Used Endurance Indicator : 0 %

EtreCheckPro report Mac Mini 2014

Thanks so much for the reply and kind offer of help. I've included DriveDX reports for the 2 drives and an EtreCheck Pro report too. As you suspected the SSD gets a good bill of health, while the HDD gets 79% - healthy but old. Etrecheck found a few things that I will try to address. And yes, the high SSD temperatures occur during cloning/backup and some other file transfer.

Thanks, Dave

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Answer 5

Ptaxey

Level 6

8,089 points

Mar 18, 2020 3:27 AM in response to David Griffiths

IMHO, there are no reasons not to do that. Overall performance will be faster than on Fusion (and significantly faster than on HDD).

The only concern is the price, but i guess 2 TB SSD is definitely worth it.

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Answer 6

Mar 18, 2020 6:44 AM in response to Ptaxey

Thanks so much for the answer. It helped a lot. Yes, I didn't mention the cost in the question. OWC sells the SSD (now 248GB) for $139, plus about $60 for freight/tax to where I am in Norway, or about $200 all up. A 2TB SSD here would cost me about $350, quite a bit more. However, I am hoping that it would make the computer snappy enough to be able to work with software like Photoshop and Premiere, which at the moment is total frustration. The alternative would be a new machine.

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Answer 7

rkaufmann87

Level 10

146,834 points

Mar 20, 2020 9:39 PM in response to David Griffiths

OWC has International distributors, many are in Europe. Please investigate their web page and you can find a list of them.

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