Slow boot time after update to Mojave - External SSD

"maverick1987" reported in another thread that his Lacie SSD Thunderbold 1TB (STFS1000401) is booting fast. Another user reported various Lacie drives that boot fast.

What model is your Lacie that is slow? Does the slowness appear before or after the Apple logo at startup? Also, when you open System Information, do you see your drive under SATA section with fields like "TRIM Support: Yes/No" and "Medium Type: Solid State"?

I formatted my internal drive with CCC to HFS+ and I am now using Mac OS Mojave 10.14.1 on a HFS+ partition. My experience is, so sadly, that this does not make any difference in booting time. So my conclusion is that this is a problem due to macOS Mojave. Still have no acceptable solution.

@alex-101:

We had similar suggestions a couple of times here. Switch off your Mac and wait 24 hours. Then switch back on and let us know if you're still booting in 37 seconds or if the good old boot delay of 3-4 raises its ugly head again.

@andywynn55:

We had this suggestion numerous times too in this thread. This method is completely unsupported by Apple and thus cannot be considered as a workaround. Mojave is not supposed to run under HFS+, that's why it's not possible to install it without changing to APFS. Who knows what downsides that HFS+ clone method has. Even if everything works fine at the moment, there's a high risk that this might change in the future.

Good, proficiat. The Thunderbolt connection is extremely fast.

"So, in the conclusion, the problem is the USB3 enclosure (can be the TRIM functionality that is not present to the USB3 enclosure, even if it supported the TRIM and the UASP functionality."

You do not need Trim at all. On modern SSDs it is not read at all by the SSD controller.

...well, you'd need another external drive with at least 2,5 GB storage space. Then you could clone your DIY fusion drive to that drive, boot from it, reformat the fusion drive to HFS+ and clone back to it. AFAIK, Carbon Copy Cloner supports fusion drives in all directions.

On beta line . no fix. brand new imac pro and turned off all the T2 chip security and still slow boot up. I feel like the old windows days of slow tower boots. We are going backwards. I long for a day of instant on.

I have no usb drives but do have TB3 SSD external storage drives and still the slow boot issue on a brand new imac pro as was the case on the prior imac. APFS may be partially to blame but if you have a T2 chip mac, that will mess things up even further.

I think that any peripheral connection of any type seems to be suspect. I also think Apple will not rush to try to accommodate this at this time. I now doubt we will see instant on computers anytime soon at all. And I also see the latest OSX is spending a lot of time intermittently searching for what 32 bit apps we are still running and giving end of life warnings. Running Etre Check to see how many 32 bit apps I still have is scary. And if you run next years beta OS, the 32 bit apps will likley then cease to work. This seems way premature. There are countless 32 bit parts of apps and full apps all over the place with many that will never see 64 bit updates.

I use Akitio Thunder SATA Go (eSata to Thunderbolt v1) adapter. This seems to be the cheapest Thunderbolt option with two eSata ports (for two external HDDs). You can hook your SSD directly using the included SATA -> eSata cable. In my case I connected my Startech USB/eSata enclosure with its eSata cable. Akitio adapter is powered by the Thunderbolt cable which is very short but you don't have to pay for it. Included SATA -> eSata cable is powered by a USB Type-A port of your Mac.

Delock 42510 requires Thunderbolt cable (sold separately) and a power adapter (included). What is interesting is that Delock cuts the power when machine goes to sleep, which increases "Unsafe shutdown count" SMART parameter of my SSD. I didn't notice any problem with the SSD though (it cools down to the ambient temperature on sleep and then heats up to 39-40 C after each wake up).

It's pretty rank is what is is.

It doesn't feel like the OS searching the drives in startup because the delay is BEFORE the OS starts to boot. It's in firmware territory and there's a big (5-10 minute) delay for booting windows via BootCamp on an external USB as well.

Something is not happy...

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.

Oh wow so happy. Finally getting the performance I was hoping for when I created a DIY fusion drive using an external SSD to put new life into my late 2013 iMac. Startup has gone from 2 minutes plus to 20 seconds. Feel like I have a new computer!

Well, I've just gone backwards.

My MacPro - With OS on the INTERNAL drive and an externally connected SSD with APFS and used as a home directory has gone from 1 minute to 3 minutes 48 boot time.

Most of the extra BEFORE the pre-boot kernel is loaded (I boot with verbose mode so I can see what it's doing). For slightly over 3 minutes from the chime that all is fine I just have a blank screen while my MacPro contemplates how to take over the universe by boring me to death

Here's the situation after updating my external SanDisk 2TB USB SSD to 10.14.3:

Takes 35 seconds from the point where I click Restart in the Startup Disk control panel inside System Preferences to where I first see the Apple logo. I could hear the standard volume boot chime during that restart. It then took about a minute until it rebooted again, this time with a softer boot chime (akin to what you hear during firmware updates), and it finally booted to the Desktop, taking a total 2 min. 35 seconds (measured from the point at which I clicked the Restart button). Had there not be a stupid dual reboot sequence, it likely would have taken only 1 minute 35 seconds total.

This is all the reason why I have Mojave only on an external drive as a test. I am still running rock solid High Sierra on everything else. In my eyes, Mojave is still very much a bag of hurt.

OK, but 3-4 MINUTES between the chime and the Apple logo compared to now 47 seconds for the WHOLE boot process really IS a big improvement if you ask me! You'll always have to accept a certain time sink when booting from an external USB device instead of the built-in Fusion or SSD drive, typically something like 10-15 seconds. If you want to eliminate this too, then you have to retrofit your iMac with a built-in SSD upgrade, I think.

It's not booting from an external SSD that I have an issue with. It's the fact that booting is slow if there is an external SSD connected that has been APFS formatted.

There is no booting from external SSD required to hit this bug. Just have an APFS formatted drive attached and you will get the same thing.