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

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Level 1

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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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Answer 1

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

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Answer 2

iMapple Author

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 ;-)

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Answer 3

iMapple Author

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?

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Answer 4

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.

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Answer 5

den.thed

Level 9

77,050 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.

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/

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