Boot Up: Improving Speed

[-BigMac-]

Hi guys,
4th thread in 2 days. really trying to get the most of my mac this week.

With my old macbook pros and macbook airs, pressing the power button, meant the white Apple Boot Screen would show in under 3 seconds.

Why does it take around 8-10 seconds on my Mac Pro?

2.8 quad
2 x intel 330 ssd (soon to be raid 0)
1tb HDD
Single OS

What is the computer doing before it shows this screen? one of the benefits of ssds is improved boot times. after this screen, the mac pro flies. so whats taking it so long to get to it?

Thanks heaps

 

[linuxcooldude]

You mean, no instant boots?!? 8-10 seconds is probably shorter then most Mac Pro boots. I would not worry about it.

Edit: Your Mac Pro has a SSD boot drive? Still, its pretty fast, depending on what third party services you have loading.

It depends on how you time the boot. I think the standard is you have to wait till the chime, thats when the boot loader from your hard drive kicks in.

 

[-BigMac-]

You mean, no instant boots?!? 8-10 seconds is probably shorter then most Mac Pro boots. I would not worry about it.

Edit: Your Mac Pro has a SSD boot drive? Still, its pretty fast, depending on what third party services you have loading.

no, i mean the time it takes for ANYTHING to show up on the screen.
The black until the 'Apple logo' shows up.

This is taking longer than consumer low end macbook pros..

 

[derbothaus]

Post takes a while with newer rom for some reason. It is checking all the connections. Your real boot up is at Apple screen. Bet that is very fast.

 

[jonnyz]

The time you see the black screen is the firmware running the POST (Power-On Self-Test). Not sure why it would be taking so long though - my guess would be the checks on all the hardware/peripherals you may have stuffed in this Mac Pro are taking a while. Just to be safe, I would run a hardware test on the machine (information at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US - it is likely on one of the DVDs like the page says further down). Wait for the console to load, select the Perform Extended testing checkbox, and let it run. As long as everything checks out, you should be good to go.

 

[strausd]

It depends on what you have plugged in. The more you have plugged in, the longer it takes. I have 5 drives plugged in, all 8 RAM slots full, and a bunch of stuff connected in the back. Takes 20 seconds before I hear the chime. Once I hear the chime, take about 13 seconds to boot screen thanks to the SSD.

A while ago I had the same question and was told it was everything that is plugged in and connected. So I took out all my hard drives except the one with the OS, took out all but 1 RAM stick, and unplugged nearly everything from the back. Took only a few seconds.

 

[adnbek]

Open System Preferences, select Startup Disk and select Macintosh HD. Hit restart and tell me if it's faster now.

In a dual boot config, a slow to appear apple logo means the default OS is not selected properly. I know you mention only having one OS but if you had reinstalled the OS or deleted Bootcamp, the problem may still occur.

 

[auhlixer]

more hardware

Because before you see the spinning pinwheel it is doing a hardware check/test.
The macpro has a lot more to check then a mbp or mba.

When people time-booting it should start once they see the pinwheel or it would be a unfair advantage if you are comparing different s

 

[ClassObject]

Only time I boot is is updates that require it or maintenance. It's a workstation

 

[Jedi]

Well , I have just gone through the slow boot and if you reinstall [ clean install / nuke & puke ] , it will solve 95% of all your headaches.

There is nothing like a new system folder !

Where Mac`s don`t have a manual defrag ( it`s all done in the Unix background ) , a reinstall will make your Mac good as new. ( given that your start-up disc is A-Ok ).

Start up from your install dvd , then go to "Utilities" ( outside the installer ) and reformat your start up drive , if you skip this step it will just do a re-write and not a complete clean install , more like the all archive and install.
You don`t want that , trust me.

And do a "custom install" you don`t need all the printer drivers or the added language fonts , you might get use out of X11 and Quick Time 7.

Best of luck

Gary 

 

[derbothaus]

^^^ uh what?

 

[xgman]

This might help, but SSD works wonders.

To speed up ssd boot run in terminal:



sudo chown root:admin

then

sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

then

sudo kextcache -system-caches

 

[derbothaus]

This wont help POST. There is no kernel interaction as there is no hard drive interaction yet. The newer revs of the 2010 have an insanely long POST time. You don't think you even turned them on at first. I noticed it the other month with an 8-core 2.4GHz. Head scratchingly long POST. Board zaps and resets did nothing to help. I was just glad it was not mine.

 

[degl]

The boot time of the MacPro is based on the quantity of accessories connected, the MacPro has more memory slot and more disk and USB ports to check before boot than others mac.