2012 Mac Mini getting annoyingly slow.

[wurm]

First of all, I'm not one who needs the latest and greatest for what I do. Hell, until two years ago, I was happy with a 2006 iMac. Then I bought this 2012 Mini and wow...it flew by comparison. It's been great and I have no intention of upgrading anytime soon for what I need to do.

However, for the past couple of weeks or so, and even moreso in the past several days, I've been seeing more spinning beach balls than ever and things are just taking way too long to open, whether programs or even simply pages on the internet (using Firefox).

As I said, it's a 2012 Mini with 8GB ram and I'm running Mavericks 10.9.5. The stock 500GB hard drive is less than half full at a little more than 200GB used.

Restarts and running Onyx didn't seem to help. Any other ideas? I know everyone's first response is going to be to install an SSD. Yes, I know that would make it faster. But it was faster enough until a few weeks ago. I don't need fast. I just want as fast as it was until recently.

[bfd]

Maybe a nuke and restore - choose a back up from several weeks ago when things were OK?

[The Grim Ninja]

Run SMART Utility to make sure the HD is in good shape?

[hal]

I've been getting crummy performance from the last couple of versions of Firefox too. I disabled or deleted ALL extensions except adblock and it's much better now. It was having a hell of a time with some scripts, but is much better now.

[M A V I C]

While you might not feel the need for a SSD, you deserve it. Don't think about it as speed, but as a way to give you more time for the other things in life. If money is an issue, pm me.

[pRICE cUBE]

I found my 2011 Mac mini will slow down when I am running out of hard drive space.

[rich in distress]

I will add malware to the list, because of the sudden performance deterioration.
All the other advise, all good. Take heed.
Good luck!

[Onamuji]

Holy trinity...

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

[Grumpyguy]

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

[mattkime]

You could try making a new users and try doing a little work from that other account. That can help determine whether its something at the user account level.

imo, that machine should have plenty of life left in it. this is likely a software problem.

...and treat yourself to an ssd. ;-)