Problem slow boot with apfs on ssd external

Mojave requires APFS, but APFS does not require TRIM to work. Boot time got fast as soon as I put the SSD into the Thunderbolt 2 enclosure. I activated TRIM after that. As I understand it, TRIM is write-only and boot time is only affected by read-times. My SSD was pretty fast without TRIM. And it was still pretty fast with USB3 after log-in. The problem is the dark screen before Apple logo. I could live with the 40 seconds after that, but I cannot live with the 4 minutes plus before the Apple logo appears. The enclosure was pretty expansive: 106€ for a metal case with a pretty small board in it. I was lucky enough to at least have a thunderbolt 2 cable already.

Tommorrow I will try something. I will hook up my external SSD in a USB3 enclosure at my wifes Mac Mini. The Mini has not been updated to Mojave an runs on High Sierra. I want to have a look a what happens during the time before the Apple logo shows. The interesting part is, that my Macbook Pro shows long boot times even when I boot from the internal SSD with the USB3 SSD connected. And all my other drives start working, too (ie. the backup drives, although they lack a boot partition). Isn't that strange?

Just a thought but perhaps if your internal drive is formatted to HFS it does not work well with the external APFS drive when booting up the external drive. I noticed a similar issue when I formatted an external drive to APFS and installed High Sierra on and tested a few weeks ago when my internal was HFS with Sierra.

I wonder if Disk Utility shows "Solid State Drive: yes" for your SSD (in thunderbolt case). In Disk Utility select the drive, then Cmd+I to show Information window. My drive shows "Solid State Drive: no", but it's in a USB 3.0 case.

Also, do you see any Recovery partitions when you hold the Option key at startup?

Hello everyone,

i've found the solution.

A friend lent me a ssd thunderbolt drive, which I completely formatted.

With UtilityDisk have created a new APFS partition, and I used Carbon Copy Cloner to do a clone of the entire SSD USB3 to the new Thunderbolt SSD.

After the clone finished I've rebooted the mac, set the new drive as Startup Disk under the settings panel.

After the chime, now the apple logo appear after more or less 10 secs.

The boot time is now reduced from 2-3minutes to complessively about 20-30secs from the chime to OSX.

I've used only the Carbon Copy Cloner app, nothing else; nothing command settings, nothing particular settings.

So, in the conclusion, the problem is the USB3 enclosure.

Thank you for all, my friends !!

Sure,

he has a classic Lacie SSD Thunderbold 1TB (STFS1000401), but he is crazy 😀

He told me he paid him over € 500.

If the system goes and it is robust maybe I could think to buy the one with the lowest cost: D

No, no problems. Both formatted with APFS. All fine after I made the switch to the thunderbolt enclosure.
Since maverick1987 reports the same (he made that switch, too), I guess this is the only way to go for now.
But a pretty expansive one. For 106€ I could have bought another SSD......

It seems that this problem is not new. I tested rEFInd boot manager on my Mojave USB SSD and it's very slow, too. But I found that a user (see Uncle Sam post) in 2013 that fixed the slow boot problem by placing rEFInd boot partition on his internal HDD:

https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/discussion/general/thread/bc570433/#625f

I also noticed that boot is very fast if I force shut down (holding 5 sec.) the power button. Not a fix though.

I put my SSD in a Delock 42510 Thunderbolt case and the boot delay disappeared.

But this enclosure have two issues:

1. In idle mode SSD heats to 39-40 C (at 20 C ambient). It was ~30 C in the old USB enclosure.

2. The drive increases its S.M.A.R.T. property "192 Unsafe Shutdown Count" every time I issue a "Sleep" command. I have not such problem with my USB case (both cases are powered with external power adapters). I use DriveDx app to read S.M.A.R.T. data.

So, I can't recommend Delock 42510 case. Does anyone have any experience with AKiTiO eSata to Thunderbolt adapter?

Same problem here:

iMac 21" later 2017 8GB RAM

SSD + USB 3.1/C case

Boot times:

High Sierra = 25 seconds after power on, Apple logo shows fast

Mojave (APFS) = About 3 ~ 4 minutes, big delay on Apple logo; after appear, Mojave starts fast.

Yeah .. sigh I bought a sandisk extreme SSD so I can enjoy atleast a fast boot time and here comes Mojave.. What is going on in Apple.. first they made it so hard to open the system an install it yourself and now this.

If only mine was just 4 minutes. 90 minutes is about what I get with a MacPro (2013) and Mojave. It was the same with High Sierra. And i just replaced my samsung 860evo (in an inatec case) with a sandisk extreme because i was convinced it was the samsung going bad... waste of £200 there.

Thanks apple... no it was nothing. Really... nothing...

Needless to say the chances of me buying another mac ever again are pretty bloody slim... testing of any description seems to have been thrown out completely in the last few years with all apple products

Suggestion from apple is that the conversion to apfs is not the correct way to move to apfs. You need to do an erase and format as apfs... obviously that requires moving your data.

initial testing here suggests this is correct but i am still moving data around to test once i have my data back on my drives...

I took a brand new Samsung T5 SSD and formatted as APFS, then used Carbon Copy Cloner to migrate everything from the internal boot volume. Merely having it connected to my iMac results in a 1-2 minute delay in between the startup chime and it actually starting to boot.

So it would seem that at least with this issue there is no difference between having the installer convert your drive to APFS versus formatting it APFS.

@PCzzz, I'm glad you resolved it for you, but I don't see why ejecting the drive would make a difference. The drive basically gets ejected when you reboot or shut down the computer.

Based on what you said, I booted to the old, internal drive, installed the T5 software and it found a firmware update since the last time I had done this. I installed the firmware, ejected the drive just for the heck of it, and then rebooted. The problem seemed to be gone! The computer chimed, and I could see it accessing the T5 twice, then it quickly found the T5 as a startup volume and booted up. However, when I shut down and powered it up later, the startup delay was back.

I did file a bug report with Apple on this; we'll see what they say.

You are right: after my first euphorie of a quick boot (and telling everybody about it), the slow boot came back just as you describe. I am sorry and sad. It is definitively a problem caused by the password-security FirmWare in the T5, which does its work even if there is no password activated (but the firmware always is ...?.). Actually: Apple has done some good work in realising a boot-up at-all. Well, it is still totally unacceptable that neither Apple nor Samsung gives us a solution or even a hint, how to install a T5 as a bootable ssd with reasonable boot-up-time (while the screen is completely black!). This way we cannot advice anybody to buy a Samsung T5 external disk when they want to boot from it !