2012 Mac Mini getting annoyingly slow.

[hal]

Onamuji wrote:
Holy trinity...

Directory check. (Disk Utility -> Verify)
SMART check. (SMART Utility)
Malware check. (Malwarebytes)

Might as well make that your sig...

[rich in distress]

Grumpy guy, I respectfully disagree.
Re: RAM, not how much you use, but how fast you switch... i.e. good codIng.
You see 8gb getting filled, because you use 8gb.
There's no good in any amount of RAM that is not used.

Edit: Also, new or old accounts will be equally affected by malware or HD failure.

[Onamuji]

hal wrote:
[quote=Onamuji]
Holy trinity...

Directory check. (Disk Utility -> Verify)
SMART check. (SMART Utility)
Malware check. (Malwarebytes)

Might as well make that your sig...
I'm thinking that it should be on a banner at the top of every page.

[space-time]

Classical symptom of a bad hard drive.

I expect SMART Utility will indicate a failing drive.

[JEBB]

Swap the hard drive for an SSD. I did and the speed increase was amazing.

[fauch]

Grumpyguy wrote:
8 gb of ram just isn't enough anymore. I keep Activity monitor open and when it uses over 6.5 gigs I start quitting apps b

I have 16 on my system and I rarely if EVER even use 8...

[btfc]

"I'm thinking that it should be on a banner at the top of every page. "

That and "when seeking help for a computer problem please include model name/number and OS version".

[jdc]

IHMO, the chances of a bad drive is .0000001% and malware .00000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

Spinning beach balls when? browsing the web? opening 50 photoshop files? 3 browsers and 30 tabs? browsing the finder?

Narrowing down *when* it slow downs could really help diagnose the problem.

Just running random blanket fixes seems like stabbing the dark.

[wurm]

Thank you all for the comments. I just got back to this after watching Shakespeare In Love (great flick!).

Anyway, at some point tomorrow, I'll run through several of the things suggested. In addition to the specs I mentioned, I should add that I rarely keep more than one or two applications open at a time. If I'm not using it at the moment, I generally quit it.

Thanks again.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

.

wurm, try booting with your backup drive to see if it has the same problem

space-time wrote:
Classical symptom of a bad hard drive.

I expect SMART Utility will indicate a failing drive.

I doubt it will. If wurm had made a chart of the number of bad sectors over the last year, my guess is it would have been steadily going up and is now going up faster. My experience is that SMART Utility gives the best info when you pay attention to it and will usually only give a clear warning in a period of about 72 hours before it completely fails.