Q: MBP 8,1 Slow Startup with SSD
Hi,
I have an early 2011 macbook pro 8,1. It came with a 256gb ssd drive and when I first got it it would boot up very fast. I've noticed over time this slow down (still relatively fast by hdd standards). It slowed some over time, but I think I noticed it slow down a lot more right after I had a drive failure. Well, the ssd drive didn't fail itself, but there was apparently an issue with a connector and they replaced it at the apple store, but they wiped my drive before they figured out the connector issue (I had a recent time machine backup so no big deal). They ended up keeping the original SSD in there though and replacing a connector (really not sure what it was exactly).
Since I got it back that day (a few months ago) it seemed to boot more slowly and I've been on the edge of my seat thinking it won't ever load as it hovered on the blue screen for maybe 30 seconds, but it always boots up (i don't shut it off very often though). I was constantly filling my drive up to near capacity (12 to 5 gb free, at times) so I thought this might have something to do with it. Today, I installed a larger crucial SSD and replaced the 4gb of ram with 8gb of ram. Since doing so the boot time is even longer and it hovers on a grey screen before showing the apple logo, then hovers on blue screen before booting up. It takes about 30-45 seconds total, I'd guess. Then today, for the first time ever, after leaving my laptop unattended for a few minutes I received an alert message (in multiple languages) that I need to restart my laptop. It gave instructions to hold the button down and then press again after it shuts down. When I restarted I received a message my laptop had been forced to shut down ("You shut down the computer because of a problem") and offered me an error report, which I could post if it would be helpful. I've never had this happen before today.
Once booted everything seems to be working fine. Any ideas what's going on? I really want to figure out while I'm still under applecare (I realize now that I've replaced the drive & ram those are no longer covered).
Any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you! (I should also mention - I'm still running snow leopard and would definitely prefer to stay using it for now)
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Posted on May 22, 2014 8:55 PM