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Mac Pro OCW SSD vs HD - OCW SSD Boot Slower?

K

kdollar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 27, 2010
2
0
I just bought a 2010 Mac Pro and bought an OCW 120gb ssd.

The boot time is actually worse with the SSD at 45 seconds compared to 35 sec for the stock hard drive.

Also when I ran xbench I have the uncached read for the ssd at 31.34 MB/sec compared to 42.31 MB/sec for the stock hard drive which seems weird.

Anyone else have the xbench numbers for the uncached read to compare? Also what is your boot time? I tested boot time by clicking a stop watch when I pressed the power until it showed the desktop.

The total xbench score for just the harddrive was better for the SSD but still the boot time just doesn't seem right...I have always heard that it should be faster with the SSD.

SSD: 342.46
HD: 102.46
 
kdollar said:
I just bought a 2010 Mac Pro and bought an OCW 120gb ssd.

The boot time is actually worse with the SSD at 45 seconds compared to 35 sec for the stock hard drive.

Also when I ran xbench I have the uncached read for the ssd at 31.34 MB/sec compared to 42.31 MB/sec for the stock hard drive which seems weird.

Anyone else have the xbench numbers for the uncached read to compare? Also what is your boot time? I tested boot time by clicking a stop watch when I pressed the power until it showed the desktop.

The total xbench score for just the harddrive was better for the SSD but still the boot time just doesn't seem right...I have always heard that it should be faster with the SSD.

SSD: 342.46
HD: 102.46
Click to expand...

There is definitely something wrong with your drive as an OWC SSD is a very nippy beast. I would contact OWC's support: if it isn't the drive itself, they could perhaps point you towards another potential culprit.
 
By any chance are you also using an Icy Dock adaptor for that drive? And did Disk Utility seem somewhat sluggish when you initially formatted it?

The reason I asked is that I also have one of those OWC 120G ssd's in an Icy Dock. The first time I tried to use it Disk Utility was not behaving correctly and was extremely slow. I almost was ready to return the drive and the dock.

To make a long story short, what I ended up doing is reseating the drive in the icy dock. I think either the pins between the dock and the drive and/or the dock and the computer weren't fully connecting or seated.

Once I reseated the drive everything behaved as advertised.
 
I do have the icy dock. I will definitely try reseating it, thanks for the idea.

If that doesn't fix it, I am planning on calling OWC tomorrow.

Have you run xbench for your owc? What score are you getting for your hard drive, especially the uncached read?
 
I think that I am experiencing exactly the same issue.
MP is brand new, bought 2 weeks ago. I can't give you the Xbench results right now, as the technician just picked it up from me (i experience some other issues with MP...)

Anyway, I installed through Icy Dock 120GB SSD from OWC just yesterday and thought there will be a dramatic improvement in startup time but somehow it is slower. The 2TB stock HDD (which seems to have a mechanical fault - very loud) boots within exactly 30 seconds from the time I press power button. While SSD scores at 35 seconds... It should be half I believe.

Have you found a solution?
 
If you've made sure the drive is correctly seated, do the following and report back:

* make sure the SSD is selected as the startup disk under system preferences
* reset the PRAM
* reset the SMC
 
I got the following results with Xbench:

HDD (Hitachi 2TB):
Disk Test 60.94
Sequential 158.21
Uncached Write 237.30 145.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 231.10 130.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 78.06 22.84 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 254.45 127.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 37.74
Uncached Write 11.96 1.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 140.69 45.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 102.51 0.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 181.42 33.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]

SSD OWC 120 GB:
Disk Test 357.29
Sequential 217.01
Uncached Write 303.03 186.05 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 280.15 158.51 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 112.42 32.90 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 374.89 188.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 1010.50
Uncached Write 1433.79 151.78 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 509.48 163.10 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 3488.72 24.72 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 988.59 183.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Are those results good for SSD?
Is there any reason why SSD and HDD boots exactly the same, 30 seconds? I thought SSD can boot it up with something like 15s :)
 
I somehow managed to come down to 25s boot up time from OWC SSD but the question is if it shouldn't be more like 15-17s?

I am talking about the period of time once you press the power button on your Mac Pro. Maybe others can share results with their SSD.

Mine was OWC 120 GB connected through Icy Dock.
 
Boot time depends not only on the boot drive, but on the hardware configuration as well.

For reference, I've got a boot drive of approximately a minute, even though I boot from a G2 Intel.
Memory amount, hard drives and expansion cards all want to be initialised, which takes time.

But honestly, do you really care about boot times? Do you boot it up several times a day? I boot my machine once in a month so I absolutely don't care about boot times. IMO it's the most overrated factor nowadays, considering that sleeping and waking the machines takes a second!
 
I don't care too much but I want to make sure that my SSD is working properly.
I have MP 6-core 3.33 and I don't know if it is normal but before the sound beep appears it takes 10 seconds.

I never had MP before, on my MBP from late 2006 still running Tiger, the beep sound comes up straight away once I press the power button.
 
Transporteur said:
But honestly, do you really care about boot times? Do you boot it up several times a day? I boot my machine once in a month so I absolutely don't care about boot times. IMO it's the most overrated factor nowadays, considering that sleeping and waking the machines takes a second!
Click to expand...
+1 Seriously, patience is a virtue, right? Perhaps I'm a little more patient these days due to my aging iPhone 2G... EDGE is barely cutting edge, and I'm never at the edge of my seat when surfing.
SSD should speed up boot times, however as it has been mentioned boot time isn't merely dependent on type of drive, other factors are at work when booting your machine.
 
try take the drive out of the icy dock and plug it into the 2nd Optical bay. Do your tests again and that way eliminate wether it's the drive or the dock.
 
DeeEss said:
try take the drive out of the icy dock and plug it into the 2nd Optical bay. Do your tests again and that way eliminate wether it's the drive or the dock.
Click to expand...

Just tried as you said. It is even longer. Through IcyDock it takes 25s since I power MP up vs 2nd optical bay which takes 33s...
I did PRAM reset on all swapping occasions.
 
stiwi said:
I have MP 6-core 3.33 and I don't know if it is normal but before the sound beep appears it takes 10 seconds.
Click to expand...
I have the same MacPro configuration and I also see the 10-second delay from pressing the power button and the startup bong. I'm going to consider the delay as normal.

Regarding the 120 GB SSD from OWC, I have the same drive as the OP in my MacPro and it boots in less than 15 seconds. My SSD is mounted in the optical drive bay.
 
Has the OP selected the drive in the startup disk menu? Sounds hokey but just highlighting it and restarting from the pref pane cuts down the boot HD "hunt". I am assuming it is a way to bless the drive. But it does cut the grey screen with no cog wheel wait time in half. My experience. And Xbench sucks for testing.
 
myosh said:
I have the same MacPro configuration and I also see the 10-second delay from pressing the power button and the startup bong. I'm going to consider the delay as normal.

Regarding the 120 GB SSD from OWC, I have the same drive as the OP in my MacPro and it boots in less than 15 seconds. My SSD is mounted in the optical drive bay.
Click to expand...

Do you mean 15s from the time you power it on or doing the restart?
When I do a restart it takes 13-14s.

But when I power it on it takes 25-28s.
I thought the problem might be RAM because you have 12GB while I was testing with the stock 3x1GB. However I installed today 3x4GB from OWC, so I am having now exactly the same setup as you.

I checked with the free soft AJA system Test the writing and reading speeds and I am getting 262 MB/s (write) and 270 MB/s (read). So it seems that I can't fault OWC SDD.
 
derbothaus said:
Has the OP selected the drive in the startup disk menu? Sounds hokey but just highlighting it and restarting from the pref pane cuts down the boot HD "hunt". I am assuming it is a way to bless the drive. But it does cut the grey screen with no cog wheel wait time in half. My experience. And Xbench sucks for testing.
Click to expand...

I did, beside it is the only drive with OS installed, I formatted the 2TB. I even removed it for SSD testing. The wheel doesn't show up straight away when the Apple logo is displayed, it takes few seconds before the wheel appears. Is it normal?
 
A few seconds is normal 30 is not. It also has nothing to do with the attached drives speed. It is system checking. If you feel it is sluggish sometimes a pram zap can help. At boot hold down cmmd-opt-p-r for 3 boot chimes or so.
 
derbothaus said:
A few seconds is normal 30 is not. It also has nothing to do with the attached drives speed. It is system checking. If you feel it is sluggish sometimes a pram zap can help. At boot hold down cmmd-opt-p-r for 3 boot chimes or so.
Click to expand...

I did PRAM and SMC reset.
So what boot up time do you get since you power on your Mac Pro from the power button, considering it was shut down and not put asleep?

For me it takes exactly 28 seconds to see the desktop, 3 seconds more since I installed 12GB RAM instead of 3GB... (once RAM installed I did PRAM + SMC reset).
 
stiwi said:
I did PRAM and SMC reset.
So what boot up time do you get since you power on your Mac Pro from the power button, considering it was shut down and not put asleep?

For me it takes exactly 28 seconds to see the desktop, 3 seconds more since I installed 12GB RAM instead of 3GB... (once RAM installed I did PRAM + SMC reset).
Click to expand...

That sounds quite normal.

My 2010 3.2GHz Quad with 16GB of RAM and 120GB SSD boots in just under 30 seconds. My 2010 MBP with 4GB of RAM boots in about 16 seconds.

cheers
JohnG
 
johnnymg said:
That sounds quite normal.

My 2010 3.2GHz Quad with 16GB of RAM and 120GB SSD boots in just under 30 seconds. My 2010 MBP with 4GB of RAM boots in about 16 seconds.

cheers
JohnG
Click to expand...

So it seems that MP is unable to have the same boot time as MBP? In MBP the startup bong and the spinning wheel appears almost immediately once you press the power button, while in MP it takes 10 seconds before the startup bong appears. So I guess the delay between the bongs is what cause the MP to boots longer.
 
stiwi said:
I did PRAM and SMC reset.
So what boot up time do you get since you power on your Mac Pro from the power button, considering it was shut down and not put asleep?.
Click to expand...

Hard to say as it is slightly different each time depending on cache etc. Under 25 sec with a 600GB Velociraptor.
 
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