Mac Mini 2010 SSD Speed

1. The 2010 Mac Mini is only SATA 3G and not SATA 6G.

(which should give you somewhere around 220-250 MB/s Write and 250-280 MB/s Read)

2. You need to check with Crucial to make sure that the MX300 is backward compatible to 3GB.

(if not, then you may need to use a 3G SSD or one that is backwards compatible)

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct275mx300ssd1

FWIW, our 2010 Mac Mini with an older well used PNY C2111 3G SSD gets around 230 MB/s Write and 260 MB/s Read on a good day.

Your Mac does not have a 6 Gb/s interface, it has a 3 Gb/s interface so you will never get the full speed of the SSD. You can buy an SSD with a 3 Gb/s interface which will be faster than what you have but slower than an SSD with a 6Gb/s connection. OWC are the best place to buy one.

I think that either,

1. the SSD is not backward compatible to 3G or

2. it needs a firmware update.

In either case, you will need to contact Crucial support and see what they say.

FWIW, generally SSD spec's will state if they are backwards compatible.

If you can, try to check firmware version of the crucial SSD.

I found firmware might play some role.

Unfortunately, firmware update on Mac can be a pain -- I usually had to "outsource" for PC (desktop) to do the firmware update (firmware update can not be done with USB but SATA interface).

Good luck

Sam

I think the latest replies are on the right track. It's the same issue with an SSD on my 2006 Mac. If a Mac is old enough that it only has a 3Gbps SATA interface (and the 2010 Mini is one of those), it cannot take full advantage of a 6Gbps SATA drive. I agree with den.thed that in your Mac, you should be expecting 200-250Gbps on that speedtest. My old Mac achieves that.

The problem is not that it doesn't reach 500Gbps, because in a 2010 Mac mini, it never will. The real problem is that it should be reaching over 200Gbps and it's way below that.

If you get the problem solved with that SSD or a replacement, definitely keep the SSD if you later get rid of the 2010 Mini, since the SSD will run so much faster when attached to a current Mac or PC.

yeah, I've tried OWC and Samsung EVO SSDs, and they perform as fast as expected in my 2006 and 2011 Macs. I put a Crucial into a friend' 2009 MacBook Pro and I think it speed-tested as expected (200+) but I don't have access to it at the moment to check.

I have OWC and Crucial drives, one (a BX200) is not capable of running on a Sata 2 connection, if tried it drops back to to plain old Sata (1.5Gb/s) it runs at 6Gb/s when connected to a Sata 3 bus (I moved it to another Mac). All of my OWC's run at the maximum bus speed whatever it is.

The numbers you need are the two in the big round gauges at the top, and they are very low for an SSD, exchange the drive for a new one.