Mac Mini 2014, Problem with external boot drive

[Kaikidan]

I have a 2014 Mini, the one with 2.6Ghz and a 1tb slow 5400RPM HD, so as soon as i bought it i instaled a external usb 3.0 120gb SSD merged with a fast 3.0 External HDD, creating a "fusion drive", it worked amazingly well for a long time.

But after mojave update if I let my mini go to sleep for too long it just wont wake up anymore, so i need to hold power button until it shut down and then power it on again.

Also, initial boot is taking very long, before it would turn on in less than a minute, now it first play the chime, stay in a black screen for almost 2 minutes, then go to the apple logo and starts to boot.

I suppose something in mojave break some of the compatibility of booting/waking from external USB 3.0 drives. Does someone know how to fix it or what i can do to at least prevent the computer to sleep and refusing to return?

 

[dawindmg08]

Hello,

I have the same Mini, was thinking of adding an external SSD like your setup to boot from. Did you resolve this issue, or is it still not working after sleep?

 

[Fishrrman]

OP -

I often promote the idea of booting and running an older Mini from an external USB3 drive, but what you're doing doesn't make any sense.

If you want an external SSD to run "at its best", DO NOT "fuse it" with another external hard drive. That's just going to slow things down.

I would back everything up (use the internal drive), then "re-set-up" your external SSD as a "standalone SSD".

Do this, and I predict things will go much better.

 

[Kaikidan]

Hello,

I have the same Mini, was thinking of adding an external SSD like your setup to boot from. Did you resolve this issue, or is it still not working after sleep?

Haven't fixed it per se, but made it manageable, what I did: turned off the "deep Sleep" state of the disk in the settings (Energy saver > check first option, uncheck second one and maybe some other option that I don't remember), computer haven't got stuck while waking up since then, but still takes a unholy amount of time to boot when turning on (2,5min in a black screen, then apple logo, then login screen, then 1 minute to load the the drive because of filevault, on Sierra it was 10seg to go to login screen then the 1 minute to load the drive.)

what I think that happens is that when computer gets in deep sleep it cuts power to the external drive, and when waking up it forget to re-power the drive, can't see the drive, and can't boot the system so it gets stuck, so making the computer never really letting the power go off in then seemed to help, I remember reading that apparently it only happens in USB3.1 drives, on thunderbolt ones (at least 3, don't know about 2) it doesn't seem to happen.

EDIT: Sorry for the pic quality, don't remember why I didn't take a screen shot, but last month I got it turned on for 7 days before I needed to turn it off for some update. so no problems so far.

 

[treekram]

If you're having a delay when booting, check to make sure a startup disk is selected. In System Preferences, select the "Startup Disk" option. The options will be in the white box. Below the white box, make sure the text "You have selected ..." appears. If that doesn't solve the problem, you might want to try resetting the NVRAM and SMC.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295