Slow Boot Up on Mojave - External USB SSD

Question

Slow Boot Up on Mojave - External USB SSD

Loner T hope you are out there. I just upgraded my iMac to Mojave and now the system is booting extremely slow. I have my Mac OS on an external USB SSD drive and my data files on the internal 1 TB drive. The system was working perfect until recently. I did a backup and then wiped the drive completely and reinstalled Mojave and it is still having issues. Not sure where to start. The system does appear to function fine once booted up and logged in. I was planning on running Bootcamp the iMac but with all of the issues I decided to keep running Fusion.

Thanks!

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Oct 4, 2018 5:04 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Dick Richards Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 5, 2018 4:39 AM in response to Loner T

Basically I have an iMac 27" and boot/run off of an external USB SSD and have my data on my data drive that is internal. Everything was working fine and the system rebooted completely normal. I upgraded to Mojave and things seemed to be working but I actually never rebooted after the upgrade so I didn't see the error until my keyboard had a malfunction where the Shift key kept transmitting so I had to buy a new keyboard. Once I got the new keyboard the boot continued to hang. I originally thought it was a Safe Mode issue because of the Shift so I wiped the whole drive but the Mac is still hanging at boot. I think it takes around 1.5 mins or a little less for the Apple icon to finally appear.

Reply

Answer 2

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Oct 5, 2018 6:41 AM in response to Dick Richards

There is quite a bit of work related to Secure Boot in HS and Mojave. Let us try the simple things first.

Can you describe the physical connection between the SSD and the iMac? Is it a USB3/TB3 device?

Have you tried a SMC Reset?

Reply

Answer 3

Oct 6, 2018 1:48 PM in response to Loner T

The drive usually just shows blue when powered on which it is. It is a SSD drive connected to a USB 3 enclosure that connects to the iMac's USB port. Has been working fine for years until I upgraded to Mojave.

Reply

Answer 4

Oct 6, 2018 5:35 PM in response to Loner T

Last login: Sat Oct 6 19:46:00 on console

CATBUTT04:~ momanddad$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk1 999.9 GB disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +999.9 GB disk1

Physical Store disk0s2

1: APFS Volume StorageDrive 928.3 GB disk1s1

/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *63.9 GB disk2

1: Apple_HFS NIFTY64GBJ 63.8 GB disk2s1

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *120.0 GB disk3

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk3s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk4 119.8 GB disk3s2

/dev/disk4 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +119.8 GB disk4

Physical Store disk3s2

1: APFS Volume OSXDRIVE 78.4 GB disk4s1

2: APFS Volume Preboot 19.8 MB disk4s2

3: APFS Volume Recovery 512.4 MB disk4s3

4: APFS Volume VM 6.4 GB disk4s4

Reply

Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Oct 6, 2018 5:52 PM in response to Dick Richards

If the thumb drive is 32GB or larger, install High Sierra on it and try to boot from it. The other possible test is to create a 32GB partition on the current external disk, install High Sierra and test and compare.

Reply

Answer 6

Oct 8, 2018 9:06 AM in response to Loner T

I have the same problem.

With OSX Sierra boot from USB take 30/40 seconds.

Same configuration, install OSX Mojave on same SSD and iMac start on 3 minutes.

SSD on connected un USB3 port like a OSX sierra, but OSX Mojave starts very very slow!

uufff... :-(

Reply

Answer 7

iz2lsc

Level 1

8 points

Oct 10, 2018 5:32 AM in response to Loner T

The problem is APFS. I installed Mojave on my external USB SSD disk (SanDisk) and it was automatically converted to APFS. Boot time were > 2 min.

After that I converted back the SSD to HFS+ using the Paragon converter and boot time went back to normal, with Mojave. So I hope that Apple will find a fix for this APFS issue soon.

Andrea.

Reply

Answer 8

Oct 29, 2018 2:43 PM in response to Dick Richards

Hey guys, so I found a "solution" to this issue.

iMac 21 2013

8GB RAM

1TB HDD internal

Mojave 10.14

- -

I have a SSD Crucial BX500 in a USB 3.0 enclosure. It's connected to the 1st USB port.

With the SSD in APFS format, I installed a clean Mojave. Booting time was about 3-4 minutes. 😟

- -

Solution 🙂

Current Booting time: 30" until the login screen (10" until the Apple logo)

1. I've formated the SSD with disk utility. It's APFS now.

2. I "convert" it to HFS+ with the instructions here How to revert back to Apple's HFS+ from APFS - TechRepublic

3. Using Carbon copy cloner, I've clone my HDD to the SSD.

4. Set the booting disk to the SSD in the settings

5. Reboot.

I'm not an expert in this, I don't have a clear idea about the difference between APFS and HFS+, however in with this method I'm able to have it working. The Internal HDD normally was taking about 1 minute to boot, that's why I wanted to give a try with an external SSD instead of opening the iMac.

Reply

Answer 9

Nov 7, 2018 9:34 AM in response to Loner T

I have this same problem right now.

And I think it's the APFS, because I had this same problem using HighSierra when I accepted convert my HFS+ SSD to APFS. And just solved it converting back from APFS to HFS+. But when installing Mojave we don't have any chance to choose APFS or HFS+, then the SSD is automatically converted to APFS and the problem come back again. And now all we have to do is WAIT Apple take care about us.

Reply