"That was easy"

My Problem

My Mac Mini 2011 lately got slower and slower and I considered even buying a new one. But when I discovered that the core hardware from my mac mini even with a beefed up new mac mini would not be essential different, I reconsidered and looked more into the why my mac mini is slow. Turned out that it seemed to be the hard disk that was the bottle neck. Every disk access end up in a waiting game. So I decided to exchange my hard disk for 500GB SDD and hope that this would solve my problem.

My Fix

I did several repairs before but never on a mac mini and was a bit nervous realizing what a tight space this machine is. With the help of the guide of ifixit it was however a breeze. I was glad that I read some of the comments that suggested that it was not necessary to take out the whole motherboard and sure enough they were right.

My Advice

Take your time. Go slow. It is not necessary to take the motherboard out if you are carefully lay the antenna to its side. If you want more room to work than follow the complete guide and take the motherboard out too.

and for the conclusion: this hdd upgrade totally fixed my performance issue on the mac mini. Feels like a brand new mac again.