Help me troubleshoot my Mac Mini sluggishness

[GanChan]

I have an old (2012) Mac Mini with a 2.5 GH Core i5 and 4 GB of memory (both slots filled), so I know I can't expect much in the speed department. But my everyday usage is limited to browsing (usually in chrome) and light word processing, and I should be able to manage that much. But these days I just seem to be seeing more and more of the ol' spinning beach ball. LibreOffice feels especially sluggish, but web response and even Preview can be painfully slow as well. I can't find any malware on the machine, and my cable connection seems reasonably fast. I'm running Yosemite OS. The HD is a little over half full.

Is it just time to give up on this Mini and just use my cheap Samsung Chromebook for everything? Is there a particular hardware of software upgrade I should attempt? I can't afford much in the way of a desktop replacement. It DOES work; it's just sort of like pulling teeth....

 

[chown33]

A likely source of slow-downs is a spinning HD. Replacing the HD with an SSD can a make a big difference.

If the HD is starting to go bad, then that can dramatically increase the time it takes to read and write data. That can show up as "spinning beach ball", because the HD is effectively unresponsive for longer periods of time than normal.

 

[GanChan]

A likely source of slow-downs is a spinning HD. Replacing the HD with an SSD can a make a big difference.

If the HD is starting to go bad, then that can dramatically increase the time it takes to read and write data. That can show up as "spinning beach ball", because the HD is effectively unresponsive for longer periods of time than normal.

That would explain why the sluggishness seems "global," rather than confined to a particular function. I guess 7 years is about all I can expect from a HD that sees many hours of daily use....

 

[casperes1996]

Agree the HDD is a likely culprit. You can connect a USB SSD and install the OS onto that and run the whole computer off of it, likely making it a whoooole lot faster for not a lot of money.

I also recommend keeping an eye on Activity Monitor. Look for high RAM usage and perhaps CPU utilisation.

And... Use Safari instead of Chrome ;P