Mac Mini late 2012 with external SSD renovated! Better connection??

[Rojofo]

Hi to All,

firstly I'd like to give some information on my "old" Mac Mini late 2012. Despite its 16G° of live memory, the hard disk had become painfully slow after updating to Catalina and I was thinking of changing it for an internal SSD, like some other folks here.
However, simply by adding a fast external SSD (a Samsung S7, 512G°), which I use as a start-up disk, this little machine has gained a new lease of life and, for my simple use (emailing and web browsing) it is now very snappy and some of the bugs that had appeared have now disappeared!
I hope this experience will be of use to other similar Mac Mini owners!

However, this external SSD is connected by one of the USB ports. It works fast enough for my purposes but leaves me with fewer free ports. I was wondering if someone could let me know if there is any way of using either the Firewire 800 or Thunderbolt1 ports for connecting this external SSD, which has a USB-C connector ?
Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[pm-r]

However, simply by adding a fast external SSD (a Samsung S7, 512G°), which I use as a start-up disk, this little machine has gained a new lease of life and, for my simple use (emailing and web browsing) it is now very snappy and some of the bugs that had appeared have now disappeared!
I hope this experience will be of use to other similar Mac Mini owners!

What is the exact model of the Samsung SSD that you are using and suggesting???

The description you provided doesn't provide me with an actual Samsung solid-state drive model.


- Patrick
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[Rojofo]

Hi, I realize that I wrote "S7" instead of "T7". My mistake! It is the Samsung T7 500G° model: here is a link to the Samsung site: Samsung Portable SSD T7 | Samsung External Storage

The T7 seems to be a well-known model as it is often quoted on this site and others. There have been some formatting problems with it and I had to read a bit to see how to reformat it in APFS format. This was not difficult however with Mac Disk Utility.
I suppose that any external SSD drive of similar speed would have the same effect. I am not particularly advertising Samsung. This was the solution I found but there are certainly many others. What I wanted to point out was how easy it was to solve the slowness problem after moving to Catalina on these old Macs.

My question about the connection, however, remains unanswered....

 

[pm-r]

However, this external SSD is connected by one of the USB ports. It works fast enough for my purposes but leaves me with fewer free ports. I was wondering if someone could let me know if there is any way of using either the Firewire 800 or Thunderbolt1 ports for connecting this external SSD, which has a USB-C connector ?

I may get corrected on this but it doesn't seem that your mini has a USB-C connector, and the PORTABLE SSD T7 doesn't have a compatible port for the others, which would be slower anyway.

Mac mini "Core i5" 2.5 (Late 2012) Specs (Late 2012, MD387LL/A, Macmini6,1, A1347, 2570): EveryMac.com

Technical specifications for the Mac mini "Core i5" 2.5 (Late 2012). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.

everymac.com

With my confused understanding of all the multi-use ports and names these days, I would suspect that you should be able to use a compatible USB 3 hub which should give you more than enough ports for your other USB devices if you needed any, but I believe that Mini already has 4 USB ports which is a pretty good number, considering what some of the later minis don't have!!!

The USB standard supports up to 127 devices, and USB hubs are a part of the standard. A typical USB four-port hub accepts 4 "A" connections.

Understanding USB Types and the Flexible USB System

You can find Universal Serial Bus connectors on just about every PC made today. But when it was introduced, USB was leaps and bounds ahead of the technologies it replaced. What makes this standard so useful?

computer.howstuffworks.com

I have no idea if that would slow things down drastically or not, but I would suspect there may be some sort of slowdown if you were to use a hub.

I would think that should be able to provide you with enough USB 3.0 ports for your use if you were a normal user, and keep providing you with the speed that you have and want.

And as for some of the other ports. FireWire 800 would be about half as fast as USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 1 = 10 Gbps per channel (theoretical). USB 3.0 external drive tops out at around 110MBps, so I think you have already found your sweet and fastest spot.



- Patrick
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[Rojofo]

Thank you, Patrick, for this information. I didn't know the speeds of Thunderbolt and Firewire 800.

 

[chscag]

The Samsung T7 series can connect via USB C or Thunderbolt 3 (which is compatible to USB C) for maximum transfer speeds. Your Mac Mini 2012 has neither but any USB connection is probably going to result in fast speeds. So it appears that as Patrick stated, you're already getting the fastest speeds from the drive that you can get with your Mini.

 

[pm-r]

So it appears that as Patrick stated, you're already getting the fastest speeds from the drive that you can get with your Mini.

One thing closely related to this topic is what I have discovered with my own 2011 27in iMac, and that one thing that fascinates me is why and how the speed of two of my backup drives work.

Of two drives I used with carbon copy cloner, one 2.5" Buffalo HDD is connected via its Thunderbolt 1 connection to the same connection on the iMac, and the other CCC backup Drive is a bare WD Black 3.5" in a Voyager Q dock connected via its firewire 800 port to the same port on the iMac.

According to specs and theoretical speeds, for the Firewire connection, I should be getting close to 800 Mb/s for Firewire 800 and as my Thunderbolt 1 has a maximum speed of 10 Gb/s, (10 Gbps = 1250 MB/s) which is a pretty good speed increase, at least according to the books, but in actual practice a very seldom see such a speed increase. I am assuming it is due to the lower spinning speed of the Buffalo Drive.

For example, here are two carbon copy cloner clones and the amount of data and the time taken:
• WD 3.5: HDD Black in Voyager dock via FW 800: 9.32GB took 9.25 minutes
• 2.5" HDD Bufallo via Thunderbolt 1: 9.43GB took 11.54 minutes

I am not complaining, but I do not see the theoretical Thunderbolt 1 being much faster than the firewire 800, and in actual fact it is a fair bit slower.

But hey I'm retired and over 80 and I've got the time. Just don't let my eyesight get any worse, or the psoriasis rheumatoid arthritis with gout in my hands or my memory worsens.

Comments welcome, and it will help keep my brain active sorting out why the difference!!!


- Patrick
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[MacInWin]

Patrick, in addition to port speeds you have to take into consideration the read speed of the source drive and the write speed of the destination drive. Drives cannot take full advantage of the speed of TB, even TB1, for the most part. So a speed test like yours will not hit the theoretical max of the port, but should get close to the theoretical best speed of the slowest drive.

 

[ferrarr]

In addition, I believe the 3.5" drive could be a faster speed?

 

[pm-r]

Patrick, in addition to port speeds you have to take into consideration the read speed of the source drive and the write speed of the destination drive.

In addition, I believe the 3.5" drive could be a faster speed?

Thanks Jake and Bob, and yes, the 2.5" HDD spinners do seem to lag in speed compared to the 3.5" HDD spinners and no doubt their faster 7200 RPM speed certainly helps.

It is also hard after reading so much about TRIM to follow the recommended advice of OWC to not enable TRIM on their particular solid state drives that I am now using as my main internal boot drive with my 2011 27 in iMac.

WITH AN OWC SSD, THERE’S NO NEED FOR TRIM

With An OWC SSD, There's No Need For TRIM

If you’ve researched using an SSD before, you may have heard how they can slow down over time. Most manufacturers avoid this by suggesting users run TRIM.

eshop.macsales.com

OWC SSDs Built to Perform with or without ‘Trimforce’ Command

On Tuesday, Apple released the latest update to OS X with version 10.10.4, which among other improvements adds the support of TRIM for third-party SSDs.

eshop.macsales.com

- Patrick
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[MacInWin]

Patrick, think of TRIM this way--it is called "garbage collection" because it cleans up the garbage left behind by the way SSDs do reads/writes to the cells. But a "collection" cycle does add to the wear of the SSD, so companies try to minimize it. For the average user, the wear from garbage collection is really minimal, nothing to worry about.

However, if the SSD has internal garbage collection, as some of the OWC SSDs have, then turning on the system garbage collection via TRIMFORCE is doubling up the collection process, doubling the wear from that action and reducing the overall life of the SSD. It may not be a terrible loss, but it is real. That's why you don't need to enable TRIM on an OWC SSD. It's built in. It's a bit like having an automatic transmission in your car, but shifting through the gears as if you didn't. You don't get any benefit from it and it wears out the transmission.

 

[pm-r]

That's why you don't need to enable TRIM on an OWC SSD. It's built in.

Thanks Jake, and I understand how TRIM works with a Mac and why I mentioned the OWC article that treats Mac's third-party TRIM support differently.

It just strikes me as a bit odd when all other solid-state drive manufacturers are screaming to make sure TRIM is enabled. Sort of like being a marching Soldier and being the only one in step when one is using one of the OWC solid state drives...


- Patrick
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[krs]

Re TRIM -
I'm using a 1 TB Crucial SSD in an external USB 3.0 enclosure as my main drive on the 2012 Mini.
Should I have TRIM turned on??
Where do I even find the TRIM option?
I switched from the internal 500 GB spinner on that Mini to the external SSD quite a long time ago - plan was always to install the SSD inside the Mini but I still didn't get around to it.
Thinking back, I think all I did when switching to the SSD was to do a SD clone and then boot up on the clone. The spinner is still in the Mini.
Mini is running 24/7 so I never gave TRIM or anything else a second thought.

 

[pm-r]

Re TRIM -
I'm using a 1 TB Crucial SSD in an external USB 3.0 enclosure as my main drive on the 2012 Mini.
Should I have TRIM turned on??
Where do I even find the TRIM option?

I'd give Crucial a call and ask them.

Unless Apple has changed it, TRIM is shown in System Information as being enabled are not as yes or no:




BTW: How about this right from the horse's mouth so to speak:

TRIM and OS X operating systems

This articles contains a video showing a benchmark with Trim enabled, then with Trim disabled. You will see fluctuations in speed in both cases, but these fluctuations would not be noticeable under normal use.

www.crucial.com

PS: I believe Apple's more recent OS versions support and enable TRIM on third-party solid-state drives but that may only be if they are installed internally. I do not know for sure.

For more hits and info:

Google Search

- Patrick
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