Mac Pro (Very slow boot speed) SSD upgrade - OWC Aura

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lørdberg Author

Level 1

7 points

Mac Pro (Very slow boot speed) SSD upgrade - OWC Aura

Hej all

I recently purchased a 2nd hand Mac Pro (late 2013) and maxed it out w these specs:

12 core Intel Xeon E5

64GB RAM

1TB SSD

I suspect the issue is at ssd (it is owc aura n2 series) since I also upgraded my Macbook Pro 15" retina to 1TB Samsung Evo SSD and that one takes very long time to boot into MacOS.

Once pressing the power button on both macs the screen light up and Im getting the apple chime but right after the chime it is literally taking one minute for the apple logo to show up on screen and load up to MacOS (which is very long for a €270 NVME SSD such OWC Aura).

Im running MacOS Mojave on both macs and I think the issue must be fixed w a firmware update since both are running a third party nvme ssd.

Any thoughts or tips much recommended.

Regards

//Felix

Mac Pro

Posted on Feb 5, 2023 1:46 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Feb 5, 2023 5:43 AM in response to lørdberg

The solid Apple is not in the Mac's ROM at startup. It appears only after it is loaded in the first 'blob' of software form the drive. LASt that point, there has not been much of disk activity going on to slow down the process.

But two things might be slowing you down. The first is the amount of RAM that now has to be tested, 64 GB is going to take a bit of time.

The second is unlikely, but if you did not set the startup disk parameter using

System preferences > startup disk ...

your Mac may spend some time looking for that drive.

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Answer 2

Feb 8, 2023 3:21 PM in response to lørdberg

It is unlikely to be drive slowness, or anything stored on the drive that is the issue. Because when the solid Apple Appears, only one Blob of software has been loaded. The file system is not present yet (that comes next).

Once you are certain the startup disk has been specified, ONCE, the speed you get is based on your Power-On Self Test speed.

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Answer 3

Feb 8, 2023 5:46 PM in response to lørdberg

Since your post will be here for a long time, and others with similar but not identical issues may find it, I wanted to mention another issue with the Aura Drives for Mac Pro 2013.

If you fail to upgrade the firmware by Installing 10.13 High Sierra at some point in the computer's lifetime, BEFORE you attempt to use an Aura drive, you may end up with older firmware that does not understand how to talk to an Aura Drive. (Firmware is updated in a private store on the processor card, it is not installed on any drive.)

in this case, your Mac will not be able to boot from the Aura Drive at all. It will not be slow. It absolutely will not boot.

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Answer 4

lørdberg Author

Level 1

7 points

Feb 8, 2023 3:05 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

thanks for reply. I did reboot throught startup disk and I noticed a bit of speed difference but do I have to reboot it every time thru sys preferences to get faster reboot?

Regarding RAM is there any thing i can do about it or do i have to just deal with it?

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Mac Pro (Very slow boot speed) SSD upgrade - OWC Aura

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