2018 MacMini Crash & Burn to Migrate or Reinstall?

AlaskaDave · Post by **AlaskaDave** » Sun Jun 14, 2020 8:39 pm

There's always a first, unfortunately it was on what I consider to be a new MacMini. My previous was ancient that I had limped along for years but this one suddenly stopped working w/out notice. I thought it was the power supply and turns out it was the board. Rather than sink $600 into a new board I decided to get a new Mini with AppleCare. My old one did not and in this case would have been covered as it was only two years old.

Runny 24/7 do people tend to have issues with heat or am I just unlucky?

At any rate, I had been doing TimeMachine backups on the previous Mini. Do others suggest I reinstall software or use the Migration Assistant to move files from my backups?

I have Indigo, Security Spy, Weathersnoop and Plex as the main programs. I use to look forward to a new Mac, that is no longer the case.

akimball · Post by **akimball** » Sun Jun 14, 2020 9:03 pm

I’ve have a 2018 Mac mini bought with 8GB ram and only 128GB hard drive. I bought the I7 version and also 10GbE Ethernet port I did have heat issues shutting it down until the Last 3 months. I read an article that 8GB that came with the mini was inadequate and also I got an occasional low memory warning. I’m running security spy, indigo, spam drive and plex. I tried an external fan which helped a bit and put on 4 stick on rubber feet which didn’t help. 3 months ago I bought a 32 GB RAM upgrade for $130 on Amazon. Crucial brand. Upgraded and have had no Mac mini shutdowns since that time. The upgrade is easy but also requires security torx drivers. You’ll need a security torx 6, a torx10 and a torx5 to do the job. There are a couple of good YouTube videos. It’s not hard.

However, apple’s latest Mac mini comes base with 16GB ram and 256GB hard drive. So you may not require the upgrade should you decide to go that route. The processor upgrade helped immensely with plex and security spy and I think I spent about $1100 maybe total.

Edit: i misspoke. I bought an I7, not an I5. I get confused when I look at apples website....So I went to “About this Mac” to be sure and changed my post.

akimball · Post by **akimball** » Sun Jun 14, 2020 9:05 pm

I also run 24/7 but that’s typical if you do home automation.

kw123 · Post by **kw123** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 7:48 am

My Mac mini 2018 (maxed out)also died twice. Just went dark.

After 5 minutes I could restart w/o problem

I have put the mini into a vertical stand. Since then no crash.

Karl

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peszko · Post by **peszko** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:46 am

AlaskaDave wrote:Runny 24/7 do people tend to have issues with heat or am I just unlucky?

I'm running my mac mini (latest version) for about a year now, and no problems. I had an old one die on me but it was after many years.

AlaskaDave wrote:At any rate, I had been doing TimeMachine backups on the previous Mini. Do others suggest I reinstall software or use the Migration Assistant to move files from my backups?

Last time I had to migrate, i used time machine restore. All I had to do is disable and re-enable the license.

AlaskaDave wrote:I have Indigo, Security Spy, Weathersnoop and Plex as the main programs. I use to look forward to a new Mac, that is no longer the case.

I find security spy can take a lot of power depending on how many cameras you have and if you transcode. I moved my camera handling to a dedicated DVR and find this a really good solution. With just. indigo and a streamer, I find the mac mini is mostly idle.

AlaskaDave · Post by **AlaskaDave** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 10:30 am

Thanks for all the replies. I ended up going with the 3.0GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz), 32GB 2666MHz DDR4 with 512GB SSD storage. I send my security spy video to a separate drive so only need the internal one for applications installed and OS.

I noticed on the Apple page on the MacMini they highlight cooling: "Packing this much power into the same enclosure required an all-new thermal architecture — including all-flash storage, a bigger fan, expanded vents, and a redesigned power supply." Wonder if overheating was an issue with the previous models that is now being addressed? I only had three cameras managed by SecuritySpy at the time of its death.

akimball · Post by **akimball** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 10:47 am

Good choice AlaskaDave. I run between 11 and 14 security spy cameras of high resolution coming from various corners of the house which is why my trunk to the main switch is 10GbE....and probably overkill I admit.

I always suspected that the main stress on the mac mini has been from running my plex server on it. Plex has to encode and/or decode as many as 3 or 4 mkv streams at my house when kids are also using it, while security spy is straight-forward image scaling.

Your choice of memory in your mac mini is a good combination. I think you may be correct about Apple designers knowing that they were pushing the thermal limit. The mac mini is compact and the laws of thermo dynamics yield to no fruit company.

Post by **jay (support)** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:09 pm

I purchased a new i7 mini in late January, by mid-February it was spontaneously rebooting every 3-4 days. Some kind of panic in the BridgeOS on the T2 chip. After a frustrating 7+ days going round and round with support, they replaced the motherboard and I rebuilt the system on Mojave from scratch (manually pulling files from various backups, not using Time Machine directly). My Catalina experience was so bad I wasn't about to move my daily work to it.

I'm still (~once a month) getting random reboots (each with different crash reports). I'm saving the core dumps but haven't decided if I'm going to deal with the long process of trying to get Apple to do something about it (I probably will eventually). I NEVER buy a Mac without AppleCare, so I will definitely decide before that period is up.

I'm using an app called Macs Fan Control to spin the fan faster when it detects a relatively high core temp - faster than their built-in algorithms do (I bought the Pro version, so the current rule is the fan starts spinning faster at 60°C to a max of 80°C). I watched the app's window quite a bit at first, and it does kick in. PyCharm tends to periodically run one core up pretty high for some reason (which is something I've noticed many times in the past) and when it does the fan definitely picks up speed.

<rant>I'm about 50% convinced it's a heat issue (and I may try turning it on it's side), but there are other things that seem to indicate otherwise:

On a reboot it often forgets monitor arrangement (I have 3 24" monitors)
On reboot, many apps launch on different monitors than they did before the reboot (probably related to the above)
USB is super finicky - for instance, I have a USB hub that has to be plugged into one of the USB ports (not a thunderbolt port).
Also, after a reboot, I have to unplug/replug said hub before the keyboard and mouse that's plugged into it works.
I have a Logitech G635 headset that will only work if it's plugged directly into the 1st USB port.

All in all, this mini is the most problematic Mac I've had in many MANY years. Combine that with poor macOS quality, and my computing experience is really starting to drag on me...</rant>

akimball · Post by **akimball** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 5:12 pm

[quote]USB is super finicky - for instance, I have a USB hub that has to be plugged into one of the USB ports (not a thunderbolt port).
Also, after a reboot, I have to unplug/replug said hub before the keyboard and mouse that's plugged into it works.[/Nquote]

Regarding USB I had some of these issues on my mac mini (and also with various systems of my own design for MIL-STD applications). I discovered over the last couple of years that USB hub chip sets nearly always require deassertion/reassertion of the hub’s USB reset line to force the hub into renumeration of any attached clients. Sometimes the only way to do this is using a complete power cycling step... messy. For our systems we Now always use a power management SOM with intentional access to these hub reset signals. When the system reboots this condition is recognized by the SOM chip hardware and so our built in code will include USB hardware reset.

As I said, without this feature, sometimes all you can do is enumerate via power cycling the whole computer. I would bet that the Mac Mini has this shortcoming.

Thx for the tip about Macs Fan Control. Nice tip.

peszko · Post by **peszko** » Tue Jun 16, 2020 7:49 am

I had these kind of issues with an older mac mini (now replaced). With the new one (latest os), I haven't had a single hang/reboot issue since install (about a year now). Possibly just asking them to replace it would be a good idea. I only run Indigo and and Air Video (used rarely). So not really stressing the hardware.

Dual · Post by **Dual** » Tue Jun 16, 2020 8:23 am

kw123 wrote: I have put the mini into a vertical stand. Since then no crash.

Good idea. Thanks!

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