How to Speed Up Mac Mini 2012 OS X El Capitan 10.11.4

This is year 2016 and you might feel that your Mac Mini 2012 is now old to run a powerful OS X version El Capitan 10.11.4? Actually, Mac Mini is a great desktop computer from Apple and it has always been a top Mac system. Indeed an old Mac Mini requires few hardware upgrades to speed up its performance. The best part of this model is that it can be configured with any other standard peripherals. On the contrary, the low RAM and processing speed of Mac mini pull down its performance.

As per Apple, the Mac Mini doesn’t waste energy. In an idle state, your Mac mini consumes lesser than 13 watts. And the aluminum body of Mac Mini is highly recyclable. 

The technical specifications for 2.3GHz Mac mini are given below

Processor: 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 with 3MB on-chip shared L3 cache

Memory: 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory

With the passage of time it goes decreasing the performance of Mac mini. The reasons of slow Mac mini could include the following:

1. Low memory than required for applications
2. Low disk space
3. Running multiple heavy applications simultaneously
4. Drive defragmentations
5. Other hardware issues

Tips to speed up Mac Mini

Tip 1: Upgrade memory by adding additional sticks of DDR2 RAM (DDR3 for new models) module.

Tip 2: Clean up Mac drive with the help of a Mac drive cleaner utility. Delete duplicate files (iTunes, iMovies, iWork), remove unimportant applications, useless log files, caches and other unnecessary language files to free some hard drive spaces. Freeing up space on your hard drive can improve the speed and performance of your Mac Mini.

Tip 3: Defragmenting Mac could help you to speed up Mac Mini. It synchronises the files stored in your drive and rearranges the fragments of all files so as to minimize the access time of these files.

Tip 4: Empty the trash of your Mac Mini. Large files in your trash still takes up room on your hard drive and can adversely affect your computer's speed.

Tip 5: Keep an eye on applications that consumes unnecessary RAM through Activity Monitor in the "Utilities" section of your Mac. Aborting unnecessary applications could save you a lot of valuable resources.

Tip 6: Repair Mac hard disk drive permissions through Disk Utility in the "Utilities" folder.

Tip 7: Install Mac Drive Defrag utility and check the number of fragmented files with the help of demo version of the software. If too many fragments are present on the hard drive then defrag it using registered version of the software.

Tip 8:  Replace HDD with SSD and experience thunderbolt performance of Mac.

The above tips could help you speed up slow Mac mini. For more details visit: Fix Slow Mac.

Defrag Mac Hard Drive Running OS X El Capitan 10.11

Should I defrag Mac hard drive to speed up OS X El Capitan 10.11 performance? All those OS X El Capitan users who are struggling with the slow performance of the Mac hard drive have asked this obvious question.

Some of the best available tips for improving Mac OS X El Capitan performance are as follows -

(1) Remove Adobe AIR. Use the latest non-beta Adobe Air Install .DMG and the command line process

(2) Remove SIMBL and associated apps. Its a very effective step and has helped many of users.

(3) Defrag Mac disk to reduce the file access time of Mac hard drive

(4) Upgrading the Mac hard drive to a Solid State Drive

(5) Resetting PRAM and NVRAM to optimize slow Macs

Mac Drive Defrag

OS X El Capitan 10.11, just like earlier versions of OS X lacks in handling hard drive defragmentation with a built-in utility. Disk Utility has everything bundles including Drive Repair, Restore, Partition, Erase, Mount but didn’t have an option to kill the hard drive fragmentations.

Software to Defrag Mac

One of the few available Mac software, Stellar Drive Defrag works on hard drive defragmentation algorithms in order to eliminate fragments and improve OS X performance. The various options available in Stellar Drive Defrag tools are –

Metadata Defragmentation

While accessing a file, the Mac OS X holds vital information about that file. This information includes file length, date of creation, modification date, likewise. This information about a file is known as Metadata, which in other words is data-about-data. These files must be defragmented in order to access the files in a quick manner. Stellar Drive Defrag software removes file fragments such as attribute files, catalog files, extent overflow and allocation files.

Quick Defragmentation

This option is meant to rearrange Mac files into contiguous memory and arrange the free space into single chunk on the disk. As the name suggest, this is a quicker approach towards removal of hard drive fragmentations.

Full Defragmentation

This feature of Stellar Drive Defrag tool is meant to gather all the files and free spaces in the selected volume into separate continuous memory locations. It helps the Mac OS to read files quickly. Though full Mac defragmentation is a lengthy process, its outcomes are usually promising. 

Optimize

This option is meant to bring all the scattered free spaces in the Mac hard drive together into a single piece of memory which ultimately reduces the chances of fragmentation in future and thus helps for the storage of new files. The process of hard drive optimization shouldn’t be confused with hard drive defragmentation.

The Mac file system is capable enough to handle the fragmented files too a greater extent however, it will not be effective in case of files that too large too handle. If a user modifies large files continuously then Mac OS X alone can’t handle the fragments created.