Hi, I've just received my new 15" PowerBook 1.67GHz laptop and am trying to figure out why it now boots up more slowly than before. Here's my story.
Immediately after receiving the PowerBook, I reformatted it into three partitions of 40GB (Startup), 10GB (Utilities Startup), and 43GB (Data). I reinstalled MacOS X from the installer DVD that came with the Mac, then transferred all my old data over from my 14" iBook during the startup questioning phase to the Startup partition. After completing this phase and rebooting, it started up fine, as expected. However, I noticed that it took more spins of the wheel during the startup process, and attributed that to the copied file layout on the hard drive.
So, I Repaired Permissions, booted up from my external FireWire drive, ran Norton Utilities/Disk Warrior and then defragmented with a new utility called iDefrag (from Germany). Upon completion of this process and rebooting twice, I noted that it now took 25-26 spins of the wheel during the bootup process vice the 15-16 spins it took previously on my 14" iBook.
Now, after logging in, nothing is slow. Everything starts up quickly, so I don't really think anything is amiss, but I'm left wondering. I perform routine maintenance on about 50 Macs at work and have a pretty good feel for whenever anything is not normal. While this Mac is faster than anything we have at work, and we do have a number of newer Al PowerBooks from 867MHz to 1.5GHz in use, all of these machines routinely boot up with the usual 15-16 spins of the wheel.
Initially, I thought it was the new iDefrag utility. I've previously used Speed Disk, but with Symantec dropping their Mac support I've been looking for a suitable replacement. Today I upgraded our 12" Al PowerBook to MacOS 10.3.8 and used the iDefrag tool vice Speed Disk to see if that made a difference. Oddly, it didn't. After rebooting, it displayed the same 15-16 wheel spins as it had following a Speed Disk defragmentation.
Now Speed Disk and iDefrag lay down their files differently. Speed Disk puts the System files and Applications at the start of the disk, and moves the data files to the end, with a large empty block separating them. IDefrag takes advantage of a new feature in Panther that has a hotfiles area on the hard disk. It places the drive and volume information at the start of the disk, skips around a GB of free space, and then starts laying down everything else, prioritizing the order based on an algorithm I know nothing about, but seems to place key application and system files clustered in the faster area of the platter and the less used stuff further out on the platter. When it's done, there are two blank areas on the disk, the first one I mentioned above, and the remaining unused space on the disk following the used area.
Following my first use of iDefrag, I noticed this difference and attributed it to the trade-off of slower startup to faster user application response after logging in versus the faster startup with Speed Disk, and slightly slower user experience following logging in. However, after using iDefrag on the 12" PowerBook today, and noticing NO difference in the startup spin counts between Speed Disk and iDefrag use, I'm left wondering if there's some hardware difference in the new PowerBooks that might be taking more time during startup now. The 12" PowerBook had 640MB of RAM, so I don't think it's that. And, of course, from bus to hard disk, everything on the new PowerBooks is faster.
So, I'm puzzled. Any ideas? Can any other new 15" PowerBook users post how many spins their laptops are taking during the startup process? My next step is to simply run Speed Disk on the new laptop to see if it behaves differently with the new PowerBook vice the older models.
Thanks for listening...
Immediately after receiving the PowerBook, I reformatted it into three partitions of 40GB (Startup), 10GB (Utilities Startup), and 43GB (Data). I reinstalled MacOS X from the installer DVD that came with the Mac, then transferred all my old data over from my 14" iBook during the startup questioning phase to the Startup partition. After completing this phase and rebooting, it started up fine, as expected. However, I noticed that it took more spins of the wheel during the startup process, and attributed that to the copied file layout on the hard drive.
So, I Repaired Permissions, booted up from my external FireWire drive, ran Norton Utilities/Disk Warrior and then defragmented with a new utility called iDefrag (from Germany). Upon completion of this process and rebooting twice, I noted that it now took 25-26 spins of the wheel during the bootup process vice the 15-16 spins it took previously on my 14" iBook.
Now, after logging in, nothing is slow. Everything starts up quickly, so I don't really think anything is amiss, but I'm left wondering. I perform routine maintenance on about 50 Macs at work and have a pretty good feel for whenever anything is not normal. While this Mac is faster than anything we have at work, and we do have a number of newer Al PowerBooks from 867MHz to 1.5GHz in use, all of these machines routinely boot up with the usual 15-16 spins of the wheel.
Initially, I thought it was the new iDefrag utility. I've previously used Speed Disk, but with Symantec dropping their Mac support I've been looking for a suitable replacement. Today I upgraded our 12" Al PowerBook to MacOS 10.3.8 and used the iDefrag tool vice Speed Disk to see if that made a difference. Oddly, it didn't. After rebooting, it displayed the same 15-16 wheel spins as it had following a Speed Disk defragmentation.
Now Speed Disk and iDefrag lay down their files differently. Speed Disk puts the System files and Applications at the start of the disk, and moves the data files to the end, with a large empty block separating them. IDefrag takes advantage of a new feature in Panther that has a hotfiles area on the hard disk. It places the drive and volume information at the start of the disk, skips around a GB of free space, and then starts laying down everything else, prioritizing the order based on an algorithm I know nothing about, but seems to place key application and system files clustered in the faster area of the platter and the less used stuff further out on the platter. When it's done, there are two blank areas on the disk, the first one I mentioned above, and the remaining unused space on the disk following the used area.
Following my first use of iDefrag, I noticed this difference and attributed it to the trade-off of slower startup to faster user application response after logging in versus the faster startup with Speed Disk, and slightly slower user experience following logging in. However, after using iDefrag on the 12" PowerBook today, and noticing NO difference in the startup spin counts between Speed Disk and iDefrag use, I'm left wondering if there's some hardware difference in the new PowerBooks that might be taking more time during startup now. The 12" PowerBook had 640MB of RAM, so I don't think it's that. And, of course, from bus to hard disk, everything on the new PowerBooks is faster.
So, I'm puzzled. Any ideas? Can any other new 15" PowerBook users post how many spins their laptops are taking during the startup process? My next step is to simply run Speed Disk on the new laptop to see if it behaves differently with the new PowerBook vice the older models.
Thanks for listening...
