Mac Mini is acting weird...

Hello guys, I have a Mac Mini 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo w/ 4GB DDR3 RAM and 250HDD.

(Its a lengthy read, so here's the rundown... Mac Mini super slow when reading from the hard drive. Browsing the web is fast. Itunes crawls. Playing videos crawls and sucks. Looking at photos is slow. iPhoto loads up in 2 hours. HELP!)

Lately, it's been crawling slow when it comes to reading from the hard drive. And I say this because when I load up an application it takes 20-30 seconds to start up. But once its up, (Google Chrome, Calendar, uTorrent etc) it's fast. The main speed issue I see is iTunes. Its really slow when playing songs, videos, syncing songs. Also, when I play videos using VLC, the videos stutter a lot and sometimes just stop all completely.

I have iStats installed and everything seems to work fine. CPU usage is usually low, around the 1%-8% in idle and spikes up to 40%-70% if I start an application but never seen it hit any higher. Hard drive readings are different, it usually spikes up and down a lot even when constant reading or writing. I have transfered files to and from USBs and over the network and the hard drive always maxes out at around 5MB/s. But again, it goes up and down constantly.

I have defragmented the hard drive, even completely reinstalled the OS. Nothing. I have fixed the permissions. Nothing. I started noticing trouble when I installed VMWare a while back that Windows would run (or seemed to) run faster than OSX itself. When I uninstalled it, the slowness was still present.

Any ideas or clues as to why my Mini is so slow? How can I make it faster again?

This is a newer Mac-Mini...I usually I wouldn't expect a hardware failure...but some things to try/consider:

- how full is your hard drive (total gigs/gigs used/gigs free)?
- got to...Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info > click on "Diagnostics" in the left column...to see if it says "Passed" or something else.
- when was the last time you repaired "Disk Permissions"? Open "Disk Utility" to do this.
- Boot your Mac-mini from "Disk 2" of the 2 gray discs that came with your computer when new...and run the hardware test program. See if anything shows up.

All of this slowness does sound like it could be a dying hard drive...but maybe something suggested above will fix things.

HTH,

- Nick

The last time I did a disk permission repair was yesterday. The hard drive is nearly empty. I have 31GBs in usage and 266GBs free. I just did the hardware test and it passed.

I am also thinking it might be a dying hard drive but anything I can do to actually confirm it?

defensa24 said:

The last time I did a disk permission repair was yesterday. The hard drive is nearly empty. I have 31GBs in usage and 266GBs free. I just did the hardware test and it passed.

I am also thinking it might be a dying hard drive but anything I can do to actually confirm it?

Click to expand...

Do you hear any strange/unusual noises coming from the Mac-mini?...indicating a hard drive problem.

I don't always recommend it (due to in many cases it being unnecessary & time consuming)...but you could try reinstalling the OS.

Last resort is buy a new hard drive & install it (hard drives are relatively cheap). If it was the HD...then the new drive will fix the problem. If the HD wasn't dead...you could use the new HD as a external backup drive.

- Nick

No sounds or clicks. Nothing. I have reinstalled in the OS twice already and I'll probably do it again just to see. (The last time I did it was sometime last year)

Im actually looking at SSD but are they even compatible with the Mini?

defensa24 said:

No sounds or clicks. Nothing. I have reinstalled in the OS twice already and I'll probably do it again just to see. (The last time I did it was sometime last year)

Im actually looking at SSD but are they even compatible with the Mini?

Click to expand...

It's always nice to have a spare HD laying around for just this sort of thing...to swap with a suspected bad drive before committing to buying a new HD.

I don't see any reason why an SSD wouldn't work in a Mini. As long as it's the same/similar dimensions as the HD in there currently (2.5").

- Nick

I had issues with a SSD in a new model mini. I had an extra Samsung SSD laying around and it works in everything except for the mini. Never took it to far, so I am not sure what the deal is. It worked fine in my MacBook, Windows notebook, desktop, etc.

If you do get an SSD in the mini, let us know how it goes.