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I changed my internal hard drive with a Samsung Evo 250GB. This drive runs at 6 gigabit but I understand my Mac Mini runs SATA at 3 gigabit. But when I installed the SSD it only runs at 1.5 gigabit. Is there some incompatibility with the Nvidia SATA driver? Does anyone know which drives work and run 3 gigabit?
Update (09/10/2015) Hi and lucky day! I returned the Samsung EVO 250GB and ordered a Crucial BX100 250GB from a local webshop. It said on their website that this drive is compatible for the 2009 Mac Mini. Of course all 6Gb drives “work” but the negotiating speed is the culprit. When I installed the BX100 250GB I was disappointed because it also was set to 1.5Gb! I was on a chat with Crucial on their website and they suggested there must be something with “garbage collection” and to fix it I should take out the drive and let it stay connected to power only (no data connection) for at least 8 hours and the drive would fix itself. This sounded like a crazy solution but ok, I will try it. To my my amazement this really worked! Look at the enclosed pics. I get at least twice the speed I had on 1.5Gb. So my conclusion is that Crucial SSD drives work with the NVidia SATA controller in the 2009 Mac Mini. I guess this should work also with other Crucial SSDs.
So for my fix on this you would need an external power cable like an USB to SATA. UPDATE *** I upgraded from Mac OS X 10.9 to 10.10. I then noticed the Crucial SSD again had gone back again to 1.5Gb. Tried different things like resetting pram, upgraded Trim Enabler etc. No luck. So I thought I should try again the suggestion with putting the drive on power-only for some hours. That again did the trick! Amazing (but weird) solution. I am now back where I want with 3Gb speed. Update (08/31/2015) I checked the Crucial compaibility search and it says the BX100 should work. Will report back. http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible… I also found this useful article on upgrading old Macs with SSD: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/tuylaant/2014/0… Update (02/29/2016) The Mini is back to 1.5Gb :-( I have tried every trick except opening the Mini and doing the “let alone with power and no data” trick. I don’t have time for that right now. So that did not last for long. I hate this issue. Sorry. Update (10/02/2016) I came by this discussion that suggested using the Kingston UV400 SSD drives since they have a Marvell controller and do not conflict with the nVidia SATA controller. Would love to hear if anyone has tested this.
Thanks @Dan for your suggestions. Sorry i did not accept your answer since I solved it myself. From my experience the NVidia SATA controller is not easy to deal with. But that is what the 2009 Mac Mini has. I have no problems with 2008 MacBookPs and 6Gb SSDs. They all autosense capable speed. As it is hard nowadays to find any new 3Gb the conclusion here is that e.g. CRUCIAL SSDs work with the 2009 Mac Mini and NOT the Samsung EVO. At least stay away from Sandforce driven SSDs. The trick with leaving the drive plugged into power-only for some hours is weird but works obviously! The “problem” is Macs last too long. I doubt I would be plundering with a 2009 Dell laptop…
I think you’ll find any SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) drive will fail here (fixed or auto). This systems SATA port speed is only SATA II (3.0 Gb/s). Make sure your systems firmware is upto date as Apple did address some SATA port issues within the newer firmware level. Follow this Apple T/N: About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers See if that works some of the newer versions of this system will work with the newer auto sense SSD’s. If not you’ll need to get a fixed SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) SSD which are becoming hard to find.
Hello! I have the same problem with my macs . Both runs MacOS 10.9.5 Mavericks. I have SanDisk Plus 120Gb in Mac Mini (early 2009) and SanDisk z400s 128Gb in Mac Mini (late 2009). In “early 2009” SanDisk works sometimes 3Gbit, sometimes it goes to 1,5Gbit. I cannot understand what affect at behavior like that. If I boot from external (over USB) HDD, I got 3Gbit/s every time! At this time no solution for this Mac. In “late 2009” I had the same problem. Because I do not need DVD, I removed DVD from top bay and put Optibay (cheap from China) at that place. Then I installed SSD at lower bay and moved old HDD in Optibay. I clone HDD to SSD and made SSD as boot disk. There was no success - each time after I reboot I accidentally got 3Gbit/s or 1,5Gbit/s, for no reason. Again, if I boot from external HDD, I got 3Gbit/s! At last, I swapped HDD and SSD. I put HDD back in lower bay and SSD in Optibay. Well, in this configuration I got 3Gbit/s more times, bot not each time. Then I noticed a small switch in my Optibay. After I put the switch in another position, I got 3Gbit/s every time I boot or reboot. So this solves the problem.
Hi @ All! Thank you for your great research! I´ve got a mbp 13 mid 2009 with that …. nvidia chipset and controller. For Testing i put in a lowend sandisk ssd 128 last summer (which controller inside is nowhere to find - sandisk´s own?). In yosemite it showed 1,5 GBit firstly, after enabling trim for Non-apple ssds since yosemite 10105 it got it´s correct 3,0 Gbit fine running. Now i think about a 240gb version. In my opinion sandisk made that firmware fix only for the first “etreme” because they had exactly that bad SF2281 controller built in, see http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Cru… diablote´s tests with ultraII and plus from sandisk seem to be the best solution for me - the have marvell controllers both!? On crucial side, someone tested a MX 200? http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/San… but exactly the 250 version is bad? http://www.anandtech.com/show/9258/cruci… In conclusion i´m glad NOT to go for a samsung evo - like most experts on new hardware opting……;-) I stay @ sandisk, hey just found that the ssd plus has exactly the same controller like the bx 100 sorry is in german…. http://geizhals.at/sandisk-plus-240gb-sd…
i have a crucial bx200 installed in my mini 2009, same chipset. It runs at 3.0 gb/s negotiation speed all the time no problem. I’m running El capitan. However, from what i read and noticed you have to allow the ‘Active Garbage Collection’ time and space to take care of the disk or it will throttle back to 1,5 gb/s. So don’t stuff it and allow it Some idle time at the end of the day. It works for me. On a Mac, press the Options key while powering on to enter the Startup Manager screen. Leaving the Mac on that screen provides the SSD with power but keeps it in an idle state so Garbage Collection can function, just like the BIOS screen on a Windows laptop.
Hi there, I had the same problem and i think i have found a simple workaround for this problem. Probably a little late, sorry about that … I have tested it a number of times on my imac 9.1 and keep getting the same results. I booted my imac (press “opt” key), with a bootable Linux (mint 19) Live USB and found out that the link speed of my Samsung SSD was the full 3 gigabit. Then I made the HFS + 1mb smaller with the linux disk program “Gparted” and then closed linux. Then restart the Mac with macOS and voila the 3 gigabit is now available. (See screenshots) The system will then function smoothly. However, during disk check, macOS indicates a minor error on the disk. I suspect linux writes a value in the partition table which macOS interprets as an error. I have not investigated this further yet. When you fix the “error” in macOS in recovery mode, the link speed becomes 1.5 gigabites again. I admit, the workaround is somewhat unorthodox but I didn’t want to keep it from you. Everything works fine so far. More research may be needed to find out exactly what is going on. Pls try free and let me know Testsystem: Imac 9.1 with DosDude MacOS Mojave. SSD Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB
