Late 2009 iMac SSD upgrade, slow boot

[alanmcdonley]

I installed SSD in place of Superdrive, formatted Ext,Journ, restored MtnLion from TimeMachine, renamed old boot partition on 1TB internal because confused time machine, went to SysPref->Startup Disk - Selected SSD drive and clicked restart. In fact did this a couple times.

18s white screen to apple, another 20 seconds to login screen.

btw, SysPref->Startup Disk displays 1TB SnowLep, 1TB Mtn Lion, and SSD Mtn Lion (highlighted)

1TB internal has SL partition, ML partition, a Data Partition, and the Mtn Lion recovery partition
SSD has only one partition

When I boot using the alt/option key there are two Recovery.8.2 disks shown. I am guessing one on the 1TB internal, and one on the SSD. When I boot from DVD I see two entries in the log name: disk2 partition:0. When I use DVD disk utility there is one "disk2" shown with 1.15GB Boot OS X disk image marked as "Startup Disk". Is having two recovery partitions named the same a problem?


Any ideas?

[CASLondon]

Originally Posted by alanmcdonley

I installed SSD in place of Superdrive, formatted Ext,Journ, restored MtnLion from TimeMachine, renamed old boot partition on 1TB internal because confused time machine, went to SysPref->Startup Disk - Selected SSD drive and clicked restart. In fact did this a couple times.

18s white screen to apple, another 20 seconds to login screen.

btw, SysPref->Startup Disk displays 1TB SnowLep, 1TB Mtn Lion, and SSD Mtn Lion (highlighted)

1TB internal has SL partition, ML partition, a Data Partition, and the Mtn Lion recovery partition
SSD has only one partition

When I boot using the alt/option key there are two Recovery.8.2 disks shown. I am guessing one on the 1TB internal, and one on the SSD. When I boot from DVD I see two entries in the log name: disk2 partition:0. When I use DVD disk utility there is one "disk2" shown with 1.15GB Boot OS X disk image marked as "Startup Disk". Is having two recovery partitions named the same a problem?


Any ideas?

Could be. I'm assuming that disk utility sees all the drives and partitions?

What I would do (and did last week turning my 2009 iMac into a SSD/HDD, with boot SSD in optical slot, is to do a clean ML install on the SSD with a temp user, then migrate your user in and delete the temp one, then make sure the SSD is chosen as boot disk and do whatever pointing to data on the internal you need/want to do.

You should have a SATA II speed connection on that optical, so assuming the cables are seated properly there shouldn't be a hardware issue. The renaming makes me worried but I can't think of how that did anything. Maybe try the clean install approach as above rather than restoring from TM

[alanmcdonley]

Thanks for the replies.

For some reason, when I unplug the USB connected 3TB MyBook the boot time drops to a spritely 20 seconds. I'm thinking I need to switch to using the internal HD for time machine and throw away the 3TB. Have to chew on this a bit.

[EPiCDiNGO]

I have the exact same problem on my Macbook Pro with any external hdd plugged in the white screen appears on boot up for about 1 minute The only thing I can do to fix this is unplug the external Hdd before I reboot

[alksion]

Originally Posted by EPiCDiNGO

I have the exact same problem on my Macbook Pro with any external hdd plugged in the white screen appears on boot up for about 1 minute The only thing I can do to fix this is unplug the external Hdd before I reboot

I'm pretty sure that is due to OS X recognizing that an external device is plugged in and that the user might want to boot from the device, giving the user a little extra time to hold the option key and choose an available device.

[alanmcdonley]

Originally Posted by alksion

I'm pretty sure that is due to OS X recognizing that an external device is plugged in and that the user might want to boot from the device, giving the user a little extra time to hold the option key and choose an available device.

I think you are correct that it is due to querying the extra device, (and over a very slow interface) to see if one or more bootable images exists on the disk, (but I don't think there is any extra time for the option key), and perhaps because there are quite a few of this kind of msg in the log:

AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff80160fe000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds
 on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)


Nov  1 08:11:34 Alans-iMac kernel[0]: USBF:	12.214	
[0xffffff80161e5a00] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device 
that has been plugged in.  It will keep retrying.  (Port 4 of Hub at 0xfa100000)

[gigas65]

Originally Posted by CASLondon

Could be. I'm assuming that disk utility sees all the drives and partitions?

What I would do (and did last week turning my 2009 iMac into a SSD/HDD, with boot SSD in optical slot, is to do a clean ML install on the SSD with a temp user, then migrate your user in and delete the temp one, then make sure the SSD is chosen as boot disk and do whatever pointing to data on the internal you need/want to do.

Just a clarification here, please. You mean that if i make a clean install of Snow Leopard in the new hard disk (in my case of Apple late 2009 iMac 1TB Seagate replacement program), make a temp user and then import all three users with the migration assistant from my TM backup, all our stuff will be back and working, without the need of also importing Applications, Library and System folders/files? (suppose leaving several "garbage" out?)
Thank you in advance, Alex

[CASLondon]

Originally Posted by gigas65

Just a clarification here, please. You mean that if i make a clean install of Snow Leopard in the new hard disk (in my case of Apple late 2009 iMac 1TB Seagate replacement program), make a temp user and then import all three users with the migration assistant from my TM backup, all our stuff will be back and working, without the need of also importing Applications, Library and System folders/files? (suppose leaving several "garbage" out?)
Thank you in advance, Alex

Sorry if this sounds a little confused. What I was saying, is that I would do a clean install of the OS on the new disk. In that process, create a temp admin user. Then I would use Migration assistant to bring in the old users, the applications - and if you are running a light SSD as boot drive with large data on a second HDD, stop there and manually configure the rest. Having just done this, I took the time to set everything up new, cleaning up as I went.

You could just use migration assistant to bring users, apps, data, and settings if you want and have the space on a 1tb drive.

Anyway, I think his problem isn't software, its this usb connection as has been noted.