Resolved Why is my mini unresponsive when waking from sleep??

[davidg4781]

I'm somewhat new to the mini in my signature, coming from a C2D MBP with 8GB of RAM. I've started to notice that when I get home from work and wake it up, it's very sluggish, almost unresponsive. Opening Chrome takes minutes, reading emails is terrible, and I sometimes can't click on things in Safari.

I'm sure I need to upgrade. I have 4 GB of RAM and a 5400rpm HDD. I guess what I'm asking is which should I upgrade first? Or what's causing it? I checked Activity Monitor and Memory and CPU usage looked fine.

I'm also moving back home with my mom (transferred for work, planning to stay here a while and save money). Because of this, I'm a little tempted to sell the mini and get a MBP. If this is the case, I may not bother with upgrading, especially if it's the non-upgradable hardware. I'm thinking this may not be the case since it's fine after about 10 minutes.

 

[CoastalOR]

My first impression from your symptoms would be to suspect the HD. Have you run Disk Utility to verify the disk? The 5400 rpm spinner may be getting tired and need replacing.

Which OS? Maybe a reinstall of the OS might be help.

If you decide to do upgrades then the best improvement would be to install a SSD and I would recommend increasing the RAM to at least 8 Gb.

 

[davidg4781]

I'll run disk utility. Haven't thought of that. It is the original HDD, as far as I can tell.

And I'm running El Capitan. Same as my MBP. MBP runs great. I'm pretty sure I did a fresh install when it came out, but I may try that also.

 

[Mr. Buzzcut]

Maybe fragmentation or disk near full or failing disk.

If it's only when waking, may be same as my iMac. And it infuriates me. When I wake it, it runs backup. Why? It's been asleep. No files have changed. Yet the HDD (7200 rpm wd black in my case) must churn for minutes every time I get back to working after being away a bit.

Beyond my why Apple can't figure out how to keep things like indexing and backup out of the way and save for idle times. Precisely what Windows does.

 

[davidg4781]

I'll check if it's running a backup next time. I keep an external HDD connected all the time for Time Machine. I never used to do this with my MBP.

 

[davidg4781]

Just wanted to update this.

I recently moved and in the last month didn't do a Time Machine backup. Before I just left the disk plugged in but I never got around to unpacking it. Everything was fine, until I unpacked it, plugged it in, and left it there.

But then I upgraded the RAM to 16 GB. Buttery smooth now whenever I do anything. I have no slow downs at all, except for Chrome taking annoyingly long to open. It is faster than before though.

 

[Celerondon]

Just wanted to update this.

I recently moved and in the last month didn't do a Time Machine backup. Before I just left the disk plugged in but I never got around to unpacking it. Everything was fine, until I unpacked it, plugged it in, and left it there.

But then I upgraded the RAM to 16 GB. Buttery smooth now whenever I do anything. I have no slow downs at all, except for Chrome taking annoyingly long to open. It is faster than before though.

Aha!
I suspect this situation exist in many cases where the SSD panacea is suggested. Memory still matters!

Although the blazing speed of an SSD can (and would have) masked many faults, your problem was not the slow 5400 rpm spinner. An SSD will still provide additional performance but you have your fix davidg4781.