Post/boot time

2006-2008 Mac Pros

Here is a good one for you.. Why do the generations 1,1 - 3,1 boot up so much faster than the 2009/2010?? When I owned a 2006 Mac Pro it booted up rather quickly, same with my 2008. But my 2010 takes a bit of time to boot up and its a 6-core..

Boot up time: 4 mins/6

monkeybagel said:

I'm just wondering what everyone is seeing with their power up times. I have an Apple SSD and a RAID 0 array with three 2TB disks and I have noticed if I select a startup volume by holding Option during boot, it probably takes around 30 seconds at least to show me the bootable volumes. I tend to think this is because of the three disks in the RAID array being scanned or perhaps because I have two SuperDrives but was just wondering if others are seeing the same thing.

It's a 2012 3.06/12.

Thank you.

Click to expand...

PowerPCMacMan said:

Here is a good one for you.. Why do the generations 1,1 - 3,1 boot up so much faster than the 2009/2010?? When I owned a 2006 Mac Pro it booted up rather quickly, same with my 2008. But my 2010 takes a bit of time to boot up and its a 6-core..

Boot up time: 4 mins/6

Click to expand...

Same here. My 2008 Mac Pro also boots up faster than my 2010 8 core. When I also try the pressing the option key to show the hard drives, the 2008 MP is also faster. Not sure the reasons why.

I think my 2009 takes about 30 seconds to boot, but it has a RAID card and all drive bays filled, etc. It took longer when I had an HDD boot... I seem to recall 45 seconds or so. The SSD cut that down to about 30 seconds, but I've not timed it recently.

Four minutes is a really, really long time, and I'd imagine that has to do with some sort of conflict or problem.

I will update my post with an accurate boot time. When are you measuring? I time it from press of power button to login screen, since typing out the login password would vary from person to person, and various apps loading would also vary.

From the time the grey splash screen shows up.

monkeybagel said:

I'm just wondering what everyone is seeing with their power up times. I have an Apple SSD and a RAID 0 array with three 2TB disks and I have noticed if I select a startup volume by holding Option during boot, it probably takes around 30 seconds at least to show me the bootable volumes. I tend to think this is because of the three disks in the RAID array being scanned or perhaps because I have two SuperDrives but was just wondering if others are seeing the same thing.

It's a 2012 3.06/12.

Thank you.

Click to expand...

wonderspark said:

I think my 2009 takes about 30 seconds to boot, but it has a RAID card and all drive bays filled, etc. It took longer when I had an HDD boot... I seem to recall 45 seconds or so. The SSD cut that down to about 30 seconds, but I've not timed it recently.

Four minutes is a really, really long time, and I'd imagine that has to do with some sort of conflict or problem.

I will update my post with an accurate boot time. When are you measuring? I time it from press of power button to login screen, since typing out the login password would vary from person to person, and various apps loading would also vary.

Click to expand...

So power on to grey Apple icon?

25 seconds from press of power button to light grey screen.
28.2 seconds from press of power button to appearance of dark grey Apple logo on light grey screen.
I stopped the timer then, but it was another perhaps ten seconds to the login screen, where I could enter my password.

4,1/5,1 Mac Pro, 6-core CPU, PCI slot 1 = 5870 GPU running two screens (Dell 22" and Apple 30" ACD), PCI slot 2 = Areca RAID card, PCI slot 3 = Caldigit USB 3.0/eSATA 4-port card, and all HDD bays 1-4 filled with HDDs... bays 1-3 = 3x1TB Apple/Hitachi HDDs in software RAID 0, bay 4 = 4TB Hitachi 5K4000 HDD.
Boot drive is a Samsung 830 256GB SSD in lower ODD bay, connected to lower section of original ODD bay SATA cable.

11s from grey screen to desktop - auto log-in.
256GB Samsung 830 in bay 1 (bootdrive)
180GB intel 330 in bay 2
2TB Seagatate in bay 3

Dell U2711 on DVI.

monkeybagel said:

I'm just wondering what everyone is seeing with their power up times. I have an Apple SSD and a RAID 0 array with three 2TB disks and I have noticed if I select a startup volume by holding Option during boot, it probably takes around 30 seconds at least to show me the bootable volumes. I tend to think this is because of the three disks in the RAID array being scanned or perhaps because I have two SuperDrives but was just wondering if others are seeing the same thing.

It's a 2012 3.06/12.

Thank you.

Click to expand...

I have a 2012 Mac Mini 2.3GHz Quad i7 with the two internal Apple shipped 5200RPM 1TB drives and 8GB of ram. I just backed up using CCC to a bootable 2TB external WD Passport USB 3.0 drive and then used RAID 0 on the internal drives and copied back. My boot time from the startup "Bong" sound to the busy pointer going away in 10.8.3 is 42 seconds. From the time the grey screen appears until the busy pointer goes away is 12 seconds. XBench is reporting 251MB/sec reads and 160MB/sec writes.

My boot time WAS quick.
I'm using a mac pro 4,1 with an intel SSD. I initially had the radeon 4870 card, but replaced it with a GTX 650. Boot time was fast with both cards---20 seconds, mabye?
I then decided I wanted to run Apple Service Diagnostic. This meant putting the 4870 back in so I could boot the ASD (which runs using Leopard).
After testing, I put the geforce 650 back in and boot time is painfully slow. About a full minute now.

I don't know if shuffling the graphic cards caused this, or if Apple Service Diagnostic testing somehow messed up the SSD. There was a hard disk test that involved testing the surface of the disks. I don't think SSD's have a 'surface', really.
The SSD works normally otherwise. Just boots slowly now. who knows?

This is for mine

Mac Pro 3,1 "Early 2008"
8-core 2.8 GHz
14 GB RAM
Mac OS 10.8.3

PCI Cards
ATI Radeon HD5870
ATI Radeon HD2600XT
FirmTek eSATA

Storage
Boot: RAID 0 w/ 2x Samsung 830 256GB SSDs on ODD_SATA1 and ODD_SATA2
Other: 17 rotational disks (4x SATA, 1x IDE, 9x eSATA, 2x USB, 1x FireWire)


My MacBook Air can finish booting before the Mac Pro even chimes. I think the memory and the three PCI cards add in some delay before the machine initially chimes, and I think the large amount of storage devices has to do with the delay between the grey screen and the Apple logo appearing.

Mine looks like:

But it can be as much as 10sec. more in total from day to day for whatever reasons. I never have to type in a password tho. I have mine set to auto-logon so it's straight to the desktop (which I would assume to be slower?).

I have 6 rotational HDDs in my system. The four in the drive bays are the Seagate ST3000DM001 three terabyte drives in a partitioned (chipset) RAID0 array and the two in the space under the ODD are the same in a (chipset) RAID0 used as a Time Machine volume. There's 32GB of ram and this is a MacPro1,1 with the 1.2 patch applied - but no 64bit EFI set yet. I'm currently on 10.7.5 Lion. Rrraaarrr! EDIT: Forgot to mention the display adaptor which is a 8800GT.

I could probably make it faster if I ever bothered to clean up the system. I've been updating and migrating (as opposed to fresh installs) the system ever since 10.4 and there's still lots of startup apps and utilities in there from my first 10.4 setup.