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SSD speed expectations

velvetlounger

velvetlounger

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 12, 2012
37
0
I recently bought a refurbished 2010 2.4 ghz Mac Mini and installed 8 gig of ram along with a 180 gig SSD right out of the box before installing any third party programs. The device was delivered with Mountain Lion and I would assume its a fresh install.

This is the first time I have used an SSD and from what I read I was expecting this computer to boot up within 15 seconds or so. What I am finding is that it takes around 65 seconds to boot up, and that is with no programs running.

Am I getting poor performance from my SSD? Does anyone know of any (free) SSD bench-marking software I can use to test this thing?

Thanks in advance!
 
Yep, the 2010 Mini only has S-ATA 2, so a fresh install will boot in a little less than 30 seconds, a little more after everything is installed. Only with S-ATA 3 you can get to 15s. A new rMBP for example boots in about 12 seconds.

But boot time is irrelevant either way as a Mac is not supposed to be turned off..

Edit: Oh yeah, and the C2D CPU of course also slows it down a few seconds.
 
a Mac is not supposed to be turned off..

Poki said:
Yep, the 2010 Mini only has S-ATA 2, so a fresh install will boot in a little less than 30 seconds, a little more after everything is installed. Only with S-ATA 3 you can get to 15s. A new rMBP for example boots in about 12 seconds.

But boot time is irrelevant either way as a Mac is not supposed to be turned off..

Edit: Oh yeah, and the C2D CPU of course also slows it down a few seconds.
Click to expand...
Please explain to a newbe?
 
velvetlounger said:
I recently bought a refurbished 2010 2.4 ghz Mac Mini and installed 8 gig of ram along with a 180 gig SSD right out of the box before installing any third party programs. The device was delivered with Mountain Lion and I would assume its a fresh install.

This is the first time I have used an SSD and from what I read I was expecting this computer to boot up within 15 seconds or so. What I am finding is that it takes around 65 seconds to boot up, and that is with no programs running.

Am I getting poor performance from my SSD? Does anyone know of any (free) SSD bench-marking software I can use to test this thing?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Other than the slow boot speed, does it seem to be working okay otherwise?

It sounds like you did not select a Startup Disk in System Prefs and the machine is spending time looking for all available boot drives or netboots before finding the SSD. Go into System Prefs in the Startup Pane and select the SSD as the boot drive then restart. You should notice a big difference.
 
Poki said:
But boot time is irrelevant either way as a Mac is not supposed to be turned off..
Click to expand...

They don't need to be on a day to day basis, but you do realize there are occasional needs to reboot or turn off a computer? The slow boot time is also certainly a symptom of a problem that needs to be addressed in this case.

To the OP, I have a 2007 iMac that boots in 20 seconds with an SSD so there's definitely an issue somewhere. The search for a boot drive seems like a likely explanation, do things operate quickly once you're up and running?
 
sean barry said:
Please explain to a newbe?
Click to expand...

Of course Macs don't need to run 24/7. It's a waste of energy, period. But some people are so impatient that waiting for a Mac to boot-up is too much for them to take. And a regular hard drive is not fast enough for them so they spend more $$$ so they can brag that their Mac boots-up 50% faster Big Whoop...

It's very easy to schedule a Mac using the Energy Saver preference pane to start-up and shut-down at specific times. So your Mac can be waiting to go in the morning and shut itself off in the evening when you are likely to be done using it.

I have my iMac start-up every morning at 7am. When I sit down at the computer my e-mail has been downloaded and the apps that I always use are ready and waiting for me. I don't need the iMac running at 3am when I am asleep.
 
Weaselboy said:
Other than the slow boot speed, does it seem to be working okay otherwise?

It sounds like you did not select a Startup Disk in System Prefs and the machine is spending time looking for all available boot drives or netboots before finding the SSD. Go into System Prefs in the Startup Pane and select the SSD as the boot drive then restart. You should notice a big difference.
Click to expand...

The startup drive was selected prior to my speed test, so I dont think that was the issue.

Normally I dont shut this machine off, but I was using the startup as the only benchmark that I could compare to.

Once the machine is up it seems to be nice and snappy as it should be.

I will try one of the programs listed near the top of this thread.

Thanks for all your replies
 
Mojo1 said:
Of course Macs don't need to run 24/7. It's a waste of energy, period. But some people are so impatient that waiting for a Mac to boot-up is too much for them to take. And a regular hard drive is not fast enough for them so they spend more $$$ so they can brag that their Mac boots-up 50% faster Big Whoop...
Click to expand...

Boot up time is a conveniently measurable gauge for the speed increase gained from spending a few extra bucks for an SSD (mine was about 100 bucks...definitely $$$). The SSD also, as I'm sure you know, massively speeds up day to day operations on the little things like opening programs and copying files.

My rather outdated iMac is now quite usable thanks to the SSD swap, quite worth the $$$ as opposed to buying an entire new machine.

But please, continue ranting.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I have a 2011 Mini with SSD and it doesn't boot nearly as fast as my laptops. It also has a 2nd internal drive (non SSD) and two USB drives attached to it - I don't know if that slows down boot time or not.

It resumes fast from sleep though, and is plenty fast while running, so I don't really mind.
 
velvetlounger said:
The startup drive was selected prior to my speed test, so I dont think that was the issue.

Normally I dont shut this machine off, but I was using the startup as the only benchmark that I could compare to.

Once the machine is up it seems to be nice and snappy as it should be.

I will try one of the programs listed near the top of this thread.

Thanks for all your replies
Click to expand...

Oddly AJA will not let me select my SSD as a valid drive.
Blackmagic was working. But I tested a USB drive, and now when I select my SSD it says it is a read only drive and will not test it again.
Xbench continues to work.

results are aprox 175 mbps on read and write. apox 3 times faster than the 'average' xbench result.
 
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