Slow boot time after update to Mojave - External SSD

There is disagreement here! I’m not a big fan of blithely following developers’ supported solutions. But others are - no problem that’s their prerogative. In this case you CAN clone Mojave to an unsupported format and it works, for me it has been ok for a while. But I have cloud and HDD backups in case of any problem. I live in remote Portugeuse village with erratic power so don’t want 3-5 minute boot ups every time the iMac restarts (quite regular). If you don’t have that issue then maybe sleep mode is better for you. But I’ll take my chances! Whichever way you go good luck! And I do respect those sticking to supported solutions... if that’s best option.

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.

@grdh20 - Would you please, specify your TB3 enclosure. USB-C connector looks like Thunderbolt v3, but connection is only USB. Thunderbolt drives are listed under "SATA /SATA Express" section of System Information with these fields:

Medium Type: Solid State

Removable Media: No

TRIM Support: Yes/No

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

It’s not USB or any other connection problem. I’m not going to repeat repeat my previous lengthy posts but the fact that you can work around the issue and get fast boot up by cloning a Mojave system from Apple HDD to HFS+ formatted SSD connected via USB proves that. I know that’s not supported by Apple and some posters advise strongly agsbut... it has worked for me for weeks now.

The problem 100% is a combination between APFS and USB interface. I boot APFS Mojave on Thunderbolt interface with < 1 sec. delay to Apple logo for about 3 weeks every day. If I use the USB 3.0 cable of the same StarTech (eSata/USB) enclosure, the boot delay is 3-4 min.

Users often think that USB-C means Thunderbolt v3, but in most cases it just means USB 3.1. So, I asked "grdh20" to specify his TB3 enclosure.

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.

@grdh20 - Is your external SSD listed under "SATA /SATA Express" section of System Information? Please, post the the following values of your SSD:

Medium Type: ...

Removable Media: ...

TRIM Support: ...

S.M.A.R.T. status: ...

It's good to know which Thunderbolt enclosures don't work, so we may avoid them.

The enclosure is a Akitio TB3 Thunderbay mini, but it works fine inside OSX. Never crashed there. My issues are just startup and shutdown. Always booting off internal set as startup drive. In the Akitio I have 4 850's of various sizes.

Thunderbolt AHCI Controller:

Vendor: Thunderbolt

Product: AHCI Controller

Link Speed: 6 Gigabit

Negotiated Link Speed: 6 Gigabit

Physical Interconnect: SATA

Description: AHCI Version 1.31 Supported

Samsung SSD 850 EVO 4TB:

Capacity: 4 TB (4,000,787,030,016 bytes)

Model: Samsung SSD 850 EVO 4TB

Revision: EMT02B6Q

Serial Number: S2RSNX0J701488F

Native Command Queuing: Yes

Queue Depth: 32

Removable Media: No

Detachable Drive: No

BSD Name: disk1

Medium Type: Solid State

TRIM Support: No

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

Volumes:

EFI:

Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)

File System: MS-DOS FAT32

BSD Name: disk1s1

Content: EFI

Volume UUID: 0E239BC6-F960-3107-89CF-1C97F78BB46B

disk1s2:

Your enclosure is indeed a Thunderbolt one, but I'm not sure if your problem is exactly related to this thread. We discuss a boot delay (black screen) of about 2-3 min. up to the Apple logo. It has nothing to do with slow boot after the Apple logo or slow shutdown.

Would you please explain what these two statements mean:

1. "Always booting off internal set as startup drive".

Is your external 4TB 850 EVO (Mojave) set as a startup drive or you boot from your internal HDD?

2. "Same thing happens with TB3 enclosure connected as simple data drive or even without anything connected."

This clearly means that you boot from your internal HDD, which may cause the problem after all. Do you experience slow boot if you disconnect any external enclosures (USB and Thunderbolt)?

Hi Glenn, I think Jaap followed my post below that was originally from Mike Bombich of Bombich Software: Change boot drive back to the HDD, erase the SDD as HFS+ Format , then clone the HDD --> SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner. You can't install Mojave onto the SDD 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.

You have to erase the whole SSD device(When you erase an APFS-formatted startup disk, erase the whole APFS container) for "Mac OS Extended, Journaled" to be one of the formatting options.

Be aware that Apple do not support this work around! Best back up everything first and regularly after. But has worked for me for weeks now. Good luck!

First off, the enclosure is a TB 3 with only a TB 3 to TB 3 cable. I boot only from the imac pro internal drive. The Samsung SSD's are just external data drives formatted to APFS. I will disconnect the TB3 enclosure as well as the UAD Apollo X TB3 audio interface and report back on boot speed.

Unplugged both enclosure and UAD audio TB3 interface and boot was faster. Plugged TB3 enclosure back in alone and boot was a little slower but not too much. Then tried plugging in UAD Apollo X TB3 audio device and got a hard shut down panic crash twice in a row (see first line of report sent) and then unplugged it and plugged the apollo back in while in OSX and worked fine. I will try loading drivers for UAD again and see what happens.

{"caused_by":"macos","macos_system_state":"running","bug_type":"210","os_version ":"Bridge OS 3.2 (16P52540a)","timestamp":"2018-11-21 17:51:54.52 +0000","incident_id":"A4E42B82-CE1A-49D2-9F4B-BC07E805BFC7"}

I have an iMac 5K 2017 with 32GB RAM and 3TB fusion internal HDD with no USB boodting and still experienced Mojave slow starts and more annoyingly slow waking up from sleep (each wake up is a wait of a minute). Before Mojave all was pretty instantenous.

Looking at this thread I had a go and removed Paragon NTFS software I had (latest version 15.1.x updated for Mojave) and it worked. My boot times are as fast as in Sierra before and waking up from sleep are instanteneous. I think people do have to try to eradicate all 3rd party software/drivers from the system especially when slow boot times have not much to do with USB SSD like mine.

I did a fresh MacOS install (no 3rd party software at all) and I still had this problem.

As I mentioned earlier, I fixed this by cloning an existing MacOS installation files to a HFS+ preformatted drive. I have been using this for some time now and it is working without any issues every day (touches wood). But again, I did this at my own risk and I don’t mind if this hard drive fails – I have backups and I use cloud providers along with local NAS server.

I wanted to ask has anyone opened their iMac and replaced the existing internal HDD with a Samsung SSD? Can someone who has done this please comment if they are affected by this? Am I right in thinking that this is a USB-only bug?

PROBLEM SOLVED (WITH A THUNDERBOLT ENCLOSURE)

PROBLEM:

iMac late 2012. external eve 850 ssd via usb.

Mojave 10.14.1 slow boot - 5-6 minutes. white screen.

SOLUTION:

1.BOUGHT THIS THUNDERBOLT ENCLOSURE on ebay

LaCie Rugged 1TB Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive (STEV1000400)

it is thunderbolt 1 - because my mac supports only that version of thunderbolt

2.REMOVED 4 SCREWS FROM THIS LACIE THUNDERBOLT ENCLOSURE,

then took out the HD from it, and put my ssd into it. very easy - see how

this this guy here did it. https://willhaley.com/blog/thunderbolt-enclosure/

Boot time reduced from 5 minutes to 30 seconds when i first turned on my mac

4.I WENT FURTHER. opened system preferences\startup disk
- Reselected the ssd again and hit restart

5.THEN I ENABLED TRIM.
opened Terminal typed

sudo trimforce enable

entered my password then mac restarted.

now boot time is 23-24 seconds (like it was on High Sierra) compared to 5 minutes.

i am happy AF 🙂

i really couldn’t wait more for solution from apple so i decided to spend extra 120$ to buy an enclousure and the problem is solved.

hope this helps someone.

OK cool, so that's a major advantage over the Delock enclosure then, even if the LaCie is somewhat bigger than the Delock.

By the way, does anyone know about other Thunderbolt enclosure alternatives? Could be a good idea to get an overview about what's on the market as it seems we all slowly start to realize that this bug is not something that Apple will fix anytime soon...