Slow boot time after update to Mojave - External SSD

Oh so I wonder if Apple is aware that bootcamp also is affected with external USB3 drives. I also turned off sleep so the iMac doesn't randomly crash while sleeping. It's happened a few times already since upgrading to Mojave. At this point it seems more like a downgrade. lol I just let the screen sleep and I figure the iMac is still in low power mode when idle. Not as good as sleep but I got tired of it crashing and shutting down.

Sometimes I wonder if Apple knows what day it is... But that's just my opinion based on how much things annoy me at the time of course... AT least my mouse works when I install, unlike Windows.. The competition is pretty dire TBH.

The external SSD problem isn't Mojave (Sorry, I just replied to an existing thread where someone first experienced in Mojave by the looks). It happens in High Sierra too. That's where I first experienced it. I was hoping that it was an early APFS issue, and that an upgrade to Mojave would sort it. It didn't. I can't fault sleeping in Mojave sorry. None of my machines have issues. TBH sleep in Mojave seems almost as good as Lion was... (i.e. Back to 2009 reliability after almost a decade of dodgy sleep time).

Ok. Its just weird. It may be caused when we use paper shredders or some high energy appliance. I think the USB powered enclosure probably needs its own power supply because it shuts down when I use the paper shredder plugged in the same outlet. Yes the iMac and devices are all on surge suppressors.

Issue seems to be fixed finally with 10.14.3 Beta.

My Setup: Imac late 2013 + Samsung T5 via USB.

Prior installation: boot / restart time: 2:20 min

After update: less than 25 seconds

The Apple logo appears almost instantly now and loading bar starts quickly progressing.

cheers

Boris

Yes it looks like it's been fixed in 10.14.3 Beta 2.

The Apple logo appears instantly and loading begins as soon as logo appears.

All up takes 48sec on mac mini 2018. It used to take 3-4min.

Using an Wavlink USB 3.1 gen2 enclosure + 860 EVO.

Well then that's great. I wonder if Apple will note that on the release note. Glad Apple is fixing it. Disappointed that this nasty "bug" was completely missed by Apple or they ignored the issue at the time.

Finally - if this is true, it's awesome!

Does anybody know if the bug was fixed in 10.14.3 BETA 2 only? As I'm not a developer, I'm considering installing the public Beta 1 that was just released. This of course wouldn't make any sense if only Beta 2 solves the problem which is not (yet) available for the public AFAIK...

I'm still running High Sierra on my Apple branded internal SSDs in my Macs, but I have a 2TB SanDisk Extreme USB external SSD with Mojave on it. I actually used CCC to clone my internal to the external, and then I applied the Mojave update on the external. I wanted to do this to see if there would be problems, so I could decided if I wanted to then install Mojave on my internal SSD. Like others have reported here, I too have found very long boot times. But unlike what others have reported, I am hearing TWO startup chimes and two progress bars before I finally get to the desktop. And on my late 2015 5K iMac, the first startup chime is full volume, full bass, and then I see a progress bar, and 60% of the way through it seems to restart again, and I hear a second startup Chime, only this time the sound is quieter and almost no bass (almost like a firmware update), and then I see another progress bar, and finally it boots to the Desktop. Am I alone in experiencing this? I actually started a new thread on that topic but not a single person gave me the courtesy of a reply so I Googled, found this thread, and decided to post here. Thanks.

Did you no read my previous post in which I said I already opened a new thread and because no one gave me the courtesy of a reply in that other thread, I Googled and found this thread and BECAUSE IT IS RELATED, I posted here?

It is indeed on-topic and related since I am trying to boot Mojave off an External SSD and boot times are slow. That's word-for-word the very titled of this thread!!!

Sorry, must have overread the last two lines of your posting. Anyway, like the rest of us here, just wait until 10.14.3 is released to the public, then we all will find out if our boot delay problem has been solved. But even if so, I doubt that it will improve your second problem, the one with the two chimes.

Actually, it's not specific to USB but rather MOJAVE. I know because I partitioned my SanDisk Extreme 2TB USB SSD and installed El Capitan on the new partition. I can boot into it with no delay and only 1 boot chime too. It's only when booting off that external USB drive in Mojave that I get a very slow boot (and two boot chimes). Partition your own drive and put an older OS on that partition and give it a test. No doubt you'll see a fast boot time like I am. It's very much a Mojave thing, sadly.

Nope. It's not specific to Mojave... Mine started on High Sierra (Immediately after converting my external Samsung 860EVO in an Inteck USB3 enclosure to APFS). That was a 90 MINUTE boot.

Upgrading to Mojave didn't fix it. Neither did a Sandisk Extreme SSD (After the Mojave upgrade). Reformating the disks to APFS (As opposed to converting them to APFS) resulted in a mere 90 SECOND boot time.. Still too slow.

Having Windoze on the Samsung increases the boot time (again) to about 10 minutes.

The delay (For me) is in the firmware. Not the OS. You can see that also if you enable verbose on the mac boot (-v). The delay is all BEFORE the OS boots.

I read through forums outside this one, and believe me, it is very much specific to Mojave, a few isolated cases that superficially appear to show otherwise notwithstanding.

Jump on over to the Little Snitch forum and you'll find that version 4.2.4 and earlier, in combination with Mojave, seems to cause slow boot times for many (I have Little Snitch installed). Apparently, the forthcoming version 4.3 fixes that. However, I've also read reports of people who have Mojave but who do NOT have Little Snitch experiencing slow boot times, so the root cause is not clear. But one thing that is clear to me is that I've not seen so many reports of slow boot times on MacOS versions prior to Mojave, so to say Mojave is "not an issue whatsoever," is wild speculation based on one's own personal case situation. Again, you need to read through a number of different user case experiences in this forum and outside this forum (MacRumors, etc.) to get a better picture of what's going on. That won't lead you to the root cause, but it will make the sheer diversity of experiences more clear. As such, if there's anything Apple engineers can do in a Mojave update to ease the pain many are experiencing with slow boot times, such will be welcomed with open arms.

Very happy for you... But slow boot with Mojave and Little Snitch is not what was being discussed in this thread. It's slow boot with external SSD... Specifically an external SSD that has APFS installed.

This issue occurs with BOTH Mojave and High Sierra.

A fellow can have an External SSD and Mojave and Slow Boot times (i.e., pretty much the exact topic of this thread, almost word-for-word) but still not please the volunteer Off-Topic Police because one dares to mention -- gasp -- "Little Snitch."

Happy to be informed that it also happens in High Sierra, although I've not seen that myself. The first time I saw it was when I cloned my High Sierra 1TB internal SSD to a 2TB external SSD and then updated the clone to Mojave and tried to boot to it. Indeed, had I not experienced the problem, I never would have Googled up this thread nor commented within it.

I await a MacOS update (and -- hold on to your hats OT Police -- an update to "Little Snitch") to see how those updates address the problem.