Mac Mini Slowdown

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I upgraded my Mini last week to Snow Leopard, and have been noticing some slowdowns. It takes like 15 bounces for iTunes to open, and even as I am typing this post the text is stopping and going.

Switching between windows and tabs in Safari is dreadfully slow and the beachball always appears. I even had to disable top sites in Safari because the rainbow ball would appear for a couple of seconds when opening a new tab.

I am wondering if Snow Leopard could have caused this in some way? I think it is fully compatible with my computer (a 2008 Mini 1.83ghz Core 2 Duo). I only have 1 gb of RAM, but I never had any problems with that before in the almost 2 years that I have owned the computer.

I checked the amount of RAM being used in Activity Monitor (which by the way took 7 bounces and a good wait for it to open) and a good portion (~256mb) is unused.

I am thinking it is more likely my hard drive. Even though the SMART status is verified, I think it may be failing. I used Xbench to test my computer and it compares with a 2005 iMac G5. Even though my computer exceeds the G5 in all of the categories, it gets left behind in the hard drive speed tests. I also compared my mini to other minis of the same specs and in almost every instance my hard drive is considerably slower (except in the one mini with the same model hard drive- the original Hitachi 5400 rpm).

So, could the upgrade to Snow Leopard have accentuated the existing slowness of my hard drive, or is it failing since/because of the upgrade?

Thanks,

Justin
 
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justin_clark93
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Wow, seriously nobody knows? :/.
 
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how much free space do you have on the hard drive? Rule-of-thumb is that OS X requires up to 15% of total drive space as "swap" space.
 
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justin_clark93
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I have more than 50% available (44 gb on an 80 gb drive).
 

pigoo3

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It takes like 15 bounces for iTunes to open, and even as I am typing this post the text is stopping and going.

I am thinking it is more likely my hard drive.

The Snow Leopard upgrade didn't do it. As far as hard drive space. Most folks when they upgrade to Snow Leopard usually actually gain around 10-20 gig of HD space.

For comparisons sake...my iTunes opens in 4-5 "bounces" (but my computer is probably faster & my iTunes library is probably smaller).

I agree...it's probably your hard drive.

HTH,

- Nick
 
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justin_clark93
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Hehe, nobody has a smaller iTunes library than me (25 songs). I sometimes hear this little "plink" sound come from my computer, which I read could be the hard drive parking , but I don't think I noticed it before.

Is is difficult to replace a mini hard drive? If it is, how much would Apple charge to do it?

Thanks,
Justin
 
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justin_clark93
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And actually, I just tested, it takes exactly 30 bounces to open iTunes. It used to be approximately 4-9. I just find it strange that all this corresponds with my upgrade. Could the massive amounts of files being unwritten/written destroyed my hard drive?
 

pigoo3

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Hehe, nobody has a smaller iTunes library than me (25 songs).

I have 14 songs on the computer I'm currently using!;) But that's because I haven't loaded many songs on it.

Is is difficult to replace a mini hard drive? If it is, how much would Apple charge to do it?

It's pretty involved...so I would say yes...especially for someone not used to working on computers. But you could go iFixit.com:

iFixit: The free repair manual

...and check out the procedure. How much will Apple charge?...best way to find out is call them. But my thought is more than you probably want to pay.

HTH,

- Nick
 

pigoo3

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I just find it strange that all this corresponds with my upgrade.

It could just be a coincidence. Your Mac-mini's hard drive was probably already going bad...and you just didn't notice it before doing the 10.6 upgrade. Then all of the 10.6 install operations might have "accelerated" things.

Could the massive amounts of files being unwritten/written destroyed my hard drive?

Of course "massive amounts of files being unwritten/written destroyed my hard drive" could have done it. That's called normal wear & tear!;)

That's all hard drives do:

- they spin
- they write files

Hard drives are mechanical devices...and just like anything mechanical...they wear out. Again...it's probably all just coincidence that this situation became worse during the 10.6 upgrade.

If you didn't do the upgrade...your hard drive still would have gone bad...it just would have taken a couple weeks to a couple months longer (who can really guess).;)

Hope this helps,

- Nick
 

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