Longer startup time after Monterey upgrade

Yesterday I upgraded my 2014 Mac Mini from Big Sur to Monterey. All is going smoothly BUT...my startup times have increased by 4 to 10 times what they used to be. Is this normal? I use this in music performance situations and I can't afford to wait 3 to 10 minutes for it to boot up.

Mac mini, macOS 11.6

Posted on Oct 30, 2021 1:20 PM

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Posted on Oct 31, 2021 8:34 PM

I think I've figured it out. I had a 512gb SD card in the SD slot. After removing the card the startup times returned to normal. I'm not sure what changed after installing Monterey because these increased startup times didn't happen with Big Sur. But all is better now. I appreciate everyone's help. I'm glad it was something simple and external.

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Oct 31, 2021 8:34 PM in response to Ronasara

I think I've figured it out. I had a 512gb SD card in the SD slot. After removing the card the startup times returned to normal. I'm not sure what changed after installing Monterey because these increased startup times didn't happen with Big Sur. But all is better now. I appreciate everyone's help. I'm glad it was something simple and external.

Oct 31, 2021 11:52 AM in response to Ronasara

Thanks for your reply. Prior to installing Monterey from Big Sur the startup time was well under a minute...probably 20-30 seconds. I just now tried 3 startups. The first was unbelievably in one minute. But the next two were 3.5 minutes and 4.3 minutes (these have been like every other startup since the install). I did notice that the bar under Apple logo made it to about the halfway point and locked up. It stayed there until about twenty seconds from startup and rapidly finished the startup. I have removed everything from my startup folder except for Luna which is the app for using my iPad as the monitor for the Mini. Before, there were 2 or 3 other processes included in this folder. But, there wasn't a problem under Big Sur.


Maybe, since I had that single one minute startup, the system is re-learning itself...and the startups will get progressively better?

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Longer startup time after Monterey upgrade

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