iMac with brand new SSD slow boot up

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iMac with brand new SSD slow boot up

I have an iMac Late 2012. Years ago I opted to run macOS from an external drive an it was usable, but after high Sierra is not that way. Today I upgraded that external HDD to a SSD and the boot time are fairly the same. The SSD is the new Samsung evo 860. The events are the following: power-on (5sec) - white screen (50 sec) - Apple logo with progress bar (8 - 13 sec). The speed after the system boot up is incredible, but what is happening with the boot up process?

P.D Samsung EVO 860 in an external enclosure formatted in APFS

Internal Mac hardrive on APFS used to store data only.

macOS High Sierra (10.13.4)

Posted on Apr 14, 2018 7:21 PM

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Answer 1

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Kappy

Level 10

361,753 points

Apr 14, 2018 8:15 PM in response to luis120

Reformat the internal HDD using HFS+ instead of APFS. The latter works on HDDs but isn't recommended for them.

The first boot of the new drive is always slow because caches are set up and filled and preference files are also set up and/or created. The startup time will be longer the more RAM you have installed. I don't see a thing indicating the machine is slow during startup.

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Answer 2

luis120 Author

Level 1

10 points

Apr 14, 2018 7:56 PM in response to Kappy

Thanks, but it not respond my issues, I don't want to use the internal hdd because is slow to run macOS high Sierra. SSD is my way to go, but externally since I am not going to crack open the iMac. I have seen videos of SSD boot up time and they are usually 27 sec, mines pass that mark a lot. I know external is not the same as an internal connected one.

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,753 points

Apr 14, 2018 8:09 PM in response to luis120

I have an iMac with 32GBs of installed RAM. It takes slightly more than a minute from chime to logo due to the initial memory and POST check. Once the logo appears so does the progress bar. It may take 10-15 seconds until Desktop appears. I also use an external SSD mounted in a Seagate Thunderbolt sled and connected to the iMac using Thunderbolt 2 cable. The SSD is formatted APFS.

I have a 1TB internal HDD which is formatted HFS+. That is what I suggest you do because APFS is not yet recommended for use on HDDs.

As I said before this is what you should do because you formatted your HDD using APFS. Your SSD is working as it should.

If you want a 27-second startup then reduce your memory to 2GBs, remove all Login Items, Launch Agents, Launch Daemons, third-party plug-ins and preference panes. Now it'll zip along like crazy. Fast but fairly useless.

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Answer 4

Kappy

Level 10

361,753 points

Apr 14, 2018 8:24 PM in response to luis120

It isn't that. It's the pain of having an over-equipped computer. I don't usually ever shutdown my computer so startup speed is not very important. Startup may take two minutes but you'll spend the next seven hours using the equipment. You won't start up again until the next day.

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