The external disk is kind of a bottleneck to me since the 5400 rpm drive is much slower than the theoretical troughput of USB3. The processor should be OK for a while to come if you don't need top performance. I also have an external usb3 WD hd attached, but I believe it's only 5400 as well. My mini has a 2.5 ghz i5 chip, 4gb ram, and a 5400 rpm hdd inside. That should boost the performance quite a bit since your Mini has SATA III.Īnyway, rather than try and deduce from a lot of online articles, I thought I'd ask more knowledgable folk that might have done this. I think the best course of action is to install an internal SSD in place of the spinning disk for the OS. That said, would it just be better to update to a newer model? I'm not sure as of this writing if minis even have ssd drives or if they still have the spinning versions. I also have a later iMac and I'll admit, I'm jaded when I compare experiences. I began using it mainly as a media center/server but find I'm often also using it as a 'real' computer. I'd like to get an opinion on whether adding an external ssd to my late 2012 mac mini would show a great improvement in speed.
