MacOS – Unusually long boot time in non-verbose mode – early 2008 MBP + SSD + Mavericks

bootmacbook promacosssd

Inside my early 2008 MBP (15", C2D 2.4, 4GB, GF8600M) I installed a used Samsung SSD (128GB), did a clean Mavericks install and at first startup, I restored the Applications, Desktop, Documents etc. from my Time Machine – it went fine. But now it boots up for 5 minutes, even though it used to take like 2-3 mins maximum when the original 200GB HDD with Mountain Lion was inside.

So I mirrored that new Mavericks SSD to the old HDD and booted the machine from it – time varies a lot. I tried different methods – a plain shutdown + start, a restart; I also switched disks couple of times – cannot see any relation to the boot time. In a series of bootups I measured times.

Booting from pressing the button to the login screen usually takes now (+-2 seconds):

  • from SSD 5:07 – that happened ten times.
  • from SSD it ONCE booted in 0:24 (+0:20 after logging in),
  • from HDD 0:49, 6:04, 5:35, 1:48, 5:44, 4:29, 5:45 (plus 0:40 to 1:10 after logging in) – this seemingly varies.

The bottom line is: booting from SSD usually takes exactly 5:07, though it once was 0:24. Booting time from HDD is unpredictable to me. On SSD, after logging in, it takes another 0:20 for all the apps in the background to start etc.; it's 0:40-1:10 on HDD for that – might not matter, but shows that SSD is is fact quicker once the system started.

Console application shows logs like this:

  • 15/11/13 16:54:28,000 bootlog[0]: BOOT_TIME 1384494868 0
  • 15/11/13 16:59:21,000 syslogd[19]: Configuration Notice: ASL Module
    "com.apple.appstore" claims selected messages. Those messages may not
    appear in standard system log files or in the ASL database.

so with every restart, there's boot time logged and the next message is >5 mins later (while using SSD).

Any hints on what to do next? What log to check? What can cause such long start?

UPDATE: When I run it in verbose mode, it always boots in 20s from SSD. It's 5:07 again when I don't hold cmd+v during startup. Fcsk tool says disk's fine. Any ideas?

Best Answer

Start in verbose mode and see what takes time. Here is how:

  1. Shut down your Mac if it is on.
  2. Press the power button to start the computer.
  3. Immediately press and hold the Command key and one of the following: ... the "v" key for verbose mode. (Command-V) You have successfully entered single-user or verbose mode when you see white text appear on the screen.

If it is "fsck", than you should start backing up your data – disk is most likely is failing.

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