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2014 Mac mini - replacing the hybrid drive with an SSD

Hello all,

2014 Mac mini - 2.8 GHz i5 - 8GB RAM - Hybrid drive (ssd + 1TB hdd)


Recently this machine has begun to show a spinning ball for just everything, despite regular use of Onyx and about 280GB free drive space. The SSD temperature goes up to 60°C - 65°C quite often (istat) during clone backup and other file copying. I'm just mentally making plans for a possible failing drive. OWC makes these drives, but thinking of general speed, I am also wondering about replacing both the SSD and HDD with a single 2TB SSD in the hard-drive bay and leaving the original SSD slot vacant.


It looks a simple job, but just checking - is there some reason why this is not a good idea? Very grateful for any contributions.

Thanks, Dave

Mac mini, macOS 10.14

Posted on Mar 18, 2020 3:15 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 18, 2020 4:52 PM

The original Apple SSD is just a PCIe SATA SSD so replacing the original hard drive with a standard SATA SSD should retain the same performance you have now. Of course if you install an OWC Aura SSD in place of the Apple SSD, then you will get a performance improvement since the OWC Aura SSDs are much faster NVMe drives. The computer must already have macOS 10.13+ installed so the computer has the necessary system firmware to support the OWC Aura SSD (and you must always use macOS 10.13+ with it).


Chances are your hard drive is the part which is failing and not your Apple SSD. To check the health of the SSD and hard drive run DriveDX and post the health report for each drive here (two separate reports) using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.


BTW, these SSDs can get very hot during long drive operations and it does not indicate the SSD is failing. When the SSD hits 70C or there abouts the SSD will throttle itself to lower the temperature of the drive.


If the drives are good, then you may want to check for possible software issues by running EtreCheck and posting the report here using the "Additional Text" icon.


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7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 18, 2020 4:52 PM in response to David Griffiths

The original Apple SSD is just a PCIe SATA SSD so replacing the original hard drive with a standard SATA SSD should retain the same performance you have now. Of course if you install an OWC Aura SSD in place of the Apple SSD, then you will get a performance improvement since the OWC Aura SSDs are much faster NVMe drives. The computer must already have macOS 10.13+ installed so the computer has the necessary system firmware to support the OWC Aura SSD (and you must always use macOS 10.13+ with it).


Chances are your hard drive is the part which is failing and not your Apple SSD. To check the health of the SSD and hard drive run DriveDX and post the health report for each drive here (two separate reports) using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.


BTW, these SSDs can get very hot during long drive operations and it does not indicate the SSD is failing. When the SSD hits 70C or there abouts the SSD will throttle itself to lower the temperature of the drive.


If the drives are good, then you may want to check for possible software issues by running EtreCheck and posting the report here using the "Additional Text" icon.


Mar 20, 2020 6:56 PM in response to David Griffiths

The "Load Cycle Count" on the hard drive is way past its maximum expected value which means the drive is wearing out. The SSD in the Fusion Drive setup is masking the drive's poor health and worn out state. The hard drive could very well be contributing to some of the problems. Even if the hard drive is working Ok now, it won't be for very much longer. I would suggest disabling "Put hard disk to sleep when possible" which is located in the Energy Saver System Preferences as it may help to extend the drive's life a bit.


The SSD appears to be Ok.


As far as the software you should uninstall Webroot, Clean My Mac, and Virus Barrier by following the developers' instructions. Anit-virus and cleaning apps are not needed on a Mac and usually cause more problems than they solve. Plus they impact system performance. Even if you want to use an anti-virus app you should only ever install one app since they will be competing with each other making the system even more slow and unstable. MalwareBytes is acceptable if you feel the need to use it as MalwareBytes is the only one which really works on a Mac.


Your computer is also running out of memory so uninstalling those items should help somewhat. I would suggest disabling the automatic launching of some other items to help free up some memory as well. There are some other apps I am unsure about, but uninstalling the AV & cleaning apps is a good start to see how much it improves your computer. If you still have problems, then run EtreCheck again after removing those items mentioned and post it here so that some other more knowledgeable contributors can comment on the report.


I would highly recommend re-enabling the Security updates to help keep your system safe. Security updates should rarely interfere with your system or apps.

Mar 21, 2020 1:13 PM in response to HWTech

Thank-you very much for all the help I have received. It is way more than I was ever expecting when I posted the original question. I'll go out Monday and get a 1TB SSD to replace the original spinning disc. On the software side I'll also implement the recommendations. I don't use the AV software, but then logically it doesn't need to be there. Thanks also for the tip about the euro-store for OWC.

Mar 20, 2020 4:02 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks so much for the reply and kind offer of help. I've included DriveDX reports for the 2 drives and an EtreCheck Pro report too. As you suspected the SSD gets a good bill of health, while the HDD gets 79% - healthy but old. Etrecheck found a few things that I will try to address. And yes, the high SSD temperatures occur during cloning/backup and some other file transfer.

Thanks, Dave

Mar 18, 2020 6:44 AM in response to Ptaxey

Thanks so much for the answer. It helped a lot. Yes, I didn't mention the cost in the question. OWC sells the SSD (now 248GB) for $139, plus about $60 for freight/tax to where I am in Norway, or about $200 all up. A 2TB SSD here would cost me about $350, quite a bit more. However, I am hoping that it would make the computer snappy enough to be able to work with software like Photoshop and Premiere, which at the moment is total frustration. The alternative would be a new machine.

2014 Mac mini - replacing the hybrid drive with an SSD

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