Problem using a Samsung T5 as a bootable SSD on my Mac Mini

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Level 1

19 points

Problem using a Samsung T5 as a bootable SSD on my Mac Mini

My Mac Mini (Late 2014) with 8 GB of RAM, running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 was getting slower and slower booting and running programs.

I read a couple of articles about using an external SSD drive to boot from, so I bought a Samsung T5 and used Carbon Copy to copy the native HDD to the T5. I set up the T5 as the bootable startup disk. I also deleted the System folder from the HDD.

Now the OS loads in 30 seconds, and all my program--e.g., Word, Excel, even my browser--load and run MUCH faster.

Here's the problem: When I turn on the Mac, I get a blank screen. The Mac just sits there, sometimes for a minute and a half, but sometimes three and a half minutes. Then the Apple logo appears and the OS loads--very quickly. And my startup screen sets itself up MUCH more quickly than when I was running from the HDD.

Here are my questions:

Has anyone run into this problem--that blank screen where the Mac just sits there doing . . . I don't know what?

What is the Mac doing?

Can I get around this 1.5 to 3.5 minute delay in loading the operating system?

Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Aug 17, 2018 12:05 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

andywynn55

Level 1

8 points

Nov 7, 2018 4:16 AM in response to uitech

All, a solution that worked for me. I'm using late 2013 iMac Mojave with regular 1Tb HDD that's got VERY slow despite only using 150Gb, so now trying to run whole system on Samsung 250gb T5 SDD. I formatted T5 as APFS and used Carbon Copy Clone ("CCC") to copy everything to the T5 and then set T5 as Startup Disk from Preferences. Boot time to Log In screen was snail-like 3-5 minutes with blank screen half that time! After raising the issue with Bombich Software (developers of CCC), eventually Mike Bombich himself suggested "You could boot back to the HDD, erase the entire T5 as HFS+, then clone the HDD --> SSD. Some people have reported that the HFS+ formatted T5 did not experience the startup delay. You can't install Mojave onto the T5 via the Mojave Installer without converting it to APFS, but you can clone your Mojave to an HFS+ formatted volume, and the format will not change." Tried that and Power On to login now 35 secs with log in and all apps loading instantly! Thank you Mike - great support and CCC is a great product!

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Answer 2

uitech

Level 1

4 points

Sep 28, 2018 6:49 AM in response to ghn

Did you also try a PRAM reset? That clears things up sometimes. Shut down, turn back on, right away hold down command, option, P R. Hold till you get 3 chimes.

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Answer 3

dwb

Level 7

33,316 points

Aug 17, 2018 10:16 AM in response to ghn

The first thing I'd do is go to Preferences and set the Startup Drive to the SSD. It sounds like the computer is still looking for the OS on the internal hard drive. There is some logic in what woodmeister50 says too. But if you do decide to format the drive and restore data, make sure that you've used CCC to put a Recovery Partition on the SSD. You may have skipped that step when you cloned the drive.

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Answer 4

keg55

Level 6

11,755 points

Aug 17, 2018 7:02 AM in response to ghn

Did you set System Preferences / Startup Disk to your external SSD? It might still be set to your internal HDD.

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Answer 5

ghn Author

Level 1

19 points

Aug 17, 2018 12:09 PM in response to woodmeister50

Thank you for responding.

I should have explained. I deleted the System folder from the HDD AFTER the blank screen problem occurred.

Carbon Copy Technicians also thought that the Mac was looking for OS components on both drives (the HDD and the SSD) and suggested getting rid of the System folder on the HDD. That improved the situation somewhat (it used to take over three minutes to "decide" to boot from the T5 every time).

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your advice.

Are you saying I should ERASE THE HDD (after backing up all the data on the drive), then restoring the data to the HDD? And are you recommending ERASING EVERYTHING, INCLUDING THE SYSTEM, FROM THE DRIVE? Would I be reformatting the HDD but without the OS?

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Answer 6

ghn Author

Level 1

19 points

Aug 17, 2018 12:10 PM in response to keg55

Thank you for your response.

Yes, I did reset System Preferences and identified the SSD as my Startup Disk.

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Answer 7

Dec 20, 2018 12:59 AM in response to ghn

I'm facing the same problem with iMac retina 2017 with Samsung T5 ssd.

I have to wait more than 5 minutes with black screen. This is absurd... I don't have time to format again

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Answer 8

Aug 17, 2018 4:38 AM in response to ghn

ghn wrote:

..... I also deleted the System folder from the HDD......

That is where your problem is. The internal drive still thinks

it is a bootable drive so the boot loader is spinning its wheels

so to speak trying to find the bootable system before going out

and looking for others.

When you first power up or reset, the boot loader goes out and looks

at all available drives for bootable systems. It will then boot the default

system if the Option key has not been pressed or one of the Recovery

option modes has not been selected.

The solution to this would be to save any data on that drive and erase

(be sure to select the drive not the volumes contained in it) and restore

your data only to it

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Problem using a Samsung T5 as a bootable SSD on my Mac Mini

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