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"My SSD boots in 10 seconds!"

D

Demigod Mac

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 25, 2008
846
300
I see a lot of PC guys (and even some Mac guys) claim that they can fully boot in 10 seconds or less (that is - from pressing the power button to viewing their desktop) on an SSD drive.

On my 5,1 Mac Pro with an OWC Mercury Extreme II SSD, I can at best get Power-to-Desktop in 30 seconds.

The only way I can possibly boot an OS in 10 seconds is through Parallels, where it zips through the POST process and immediately starts loading the OS.

How do these guys do it? Are they bypassing some POST procedures?
Or are they just exaggerating?
 
Demigod Mac said:
I see a lot of PC guys (and even some Mac guys) claim that they can fully boot in 10 seconds or less (that is - from pressing the power button to viewing their desktop) on an SSD drive.

On my 5,1 Mac Pro with an OWC Mercury Extreme II SSD, I can at best get Power-to-Desktop in 30 seconds.

The only way I can possibly boot an OS in 10 seconds is through Parallels, where it zips through the POST process and immediately starts loading the OS.

How do these guys do it? Are they bypassing some POST procedures?
Or are they just exaggerating?
Click to expand...

Put in 3GB of RAM and I bet you'll boot in ~15 sec. :D

On second thought isn't this just a waste of etherbits?

JohnbG
 
Here's my boot timeline measured in seconds. I timed this after a PRAM reset.

00 - Power button pressed
12 - Startup Chime
13 - Display activates
17 -  Apple logo shows up
22 - Spinning wheel under the logo
29 - Login screen ready
30 - Desktop ready

I do have quite a few USB and Firewire devices plugged in, and three hard drives inside, and 6 GB of RAM. Would that have anything to do with the boot time? It sure spends a while after the button's pressed before it chimes.
 
The more RAM you have the longer it takes your system to boot. Saying that my 2009 Mac Pro boots in 45 seconds from the original SATA drive. I'm hoping when i get an SSD soon i can boot in less than 25 seconds, but more interested in application speed as i only restart the system once a week.
 
Demigod Mac said:
Here's my boot timeline measured in seconds. I timed this after a PRAM reset.

00 - Power button pressed
12 - Startup Chime
13 - Display activates
17 -  Apple logo shows up
22 - Spinning wheel under the logo
29 - Login screen ready
30 - Desktop ready

I do have quite a few USB and Firewire devices plugged in, and three hard drives inside, and 6 GB of RAM. Would that have anything to do with the boot time? It sure spends a while after the button's pressed before it chimes.
Click to expand...

The more <insert noun here> you have, the longer the boot.

But if you want to test it out, boot up without any devices plugged in except keyboard and mouse.
 
Also, be sure that your startup disk is actually selected in the Startup Disk system preference.
 
Demigod Mac said:
Here's my boot timeline measured in seconds. I timed this after a PRAM reset.

00 - Power button pressed
12 - Startup Chime
13 - Display activates
17 -  Apple logo shows up
22 - Spinning wheel under the logo
29 - Login screen ready
30 - Desktop ready

I do have quite a few USB and Firewire devices plugged in, and three hard drives inside, and 6 GB of RAM. Would that have anything to do with the boot time? It sure spends a while after the button's pressed before it chimes.
Click to expand...

I have a 6-core 3.33 GHz with new OCZ Vertex 2 SSD (8GB RAM). I have very similar startup times as you, though I would say my startup chime is a little later (rest is a little shorter), but overall time is the same. stuff plugged in: monitor, keyboard, mouse, EyeTV, speakers, powered-off printer.
Even with the slow 30-second startup, I like to say 'watch this' (push on-button), then ask admirer a quick question, and have the desktop be open half way through their answer :)
no idea how people would get below 10 seconds. it seems that before the chime it would be unrelated to CPU and SSD?
 
My startup time was 25 seconds from chime when I first installed my SSD. Somehow now it's 15 seconds.
 
2contagious said:
My startup time was 25 seconds from chime when I first installed my SSD. Somehow now it's 15 seconds.
Click to expand...

That could be possible if OSX autocorrected some "issues" with the boot partition following the initial install.

cheers
JohnG
 
I took a video of my MacPro4,1, 2.93GHz Quad-Core with 120GB OWC Mercury Pro Extreme SSD on startup. You can see from the second the screen turns on after the chime, to the desktop, it's exactly 17.5 seconds, you can time the total process of restart by watching the video here:

http://www.wardcurry.com/startup.mp4

Exactly 20 seconds from Chime to Desktop on a restart.
 
Makes me wonder if there's a way to optimize, or bypass, some elements of the Mac POST procedure to get to that Apple logo sooner. Or is that just asking for trouble?
 
Also, 64-bit OS X systems seem to boot a bit longer. Not sure why, but my MBP i7 used to boot in about 12sec with OWC 256GB SSD Pro From the moment you press the button till you see the desktop which by default boots using 32-bit kerne. I applied the 64-bit Kernel patch that same day (1st day of installing SSD) and ever since I boot in about 20ish secs. Not sure why, but definitely weird.
 
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