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How long does your MP take to boot?

S

strausd

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jul 11, 2008
2,998
1
Texas
So far I love my 2010 Mac Pro. But I was up in the Mac lab the other day at my school and noticed how quickly the chime started. Whenever I start up my MP, it takes about 17-18 seconds for the chime to start. I have OS X to boot from an OWC SSD in the second optical bay and have selected it as my startup disk multiple times. Is this normal? The 2008 Mac Pros at school with the stock HD chimed in about 3-5 seconds or so.

Could this be happening because it is in the second optical bay? Could it be because I have my home folder on a 7200 rpm mechanical drive? Anyone know?

Thanks!
 
2009 octo 2.26 mac pro 6gb ram with OCZ Colossus 120gb SSD takes 14 secs to boot.
 
Whaditis said:
2009 octo 2.26 mac pro 6gb ram with OCZ Colossus 120gb SSD takes 14 secs to boot.
Click to expand...

Is that how long it takes for the chime to go off or is that from the second you press the button? And is the SSD in a HD bay or optical bay?
 
I had to troubleshoot a bad memory stick recently, and noticed that with more memory, the longer the delay before the chime starts.

So this delay must reflect a power-on memory test.
 
cutterman said:
I had to troubleshoot a bad memory stick recently, and noticed that with more memory, the longer the delay before the chime starts.

So this delay must reflect a power-on memory test.
Click to expand...

That's very interesting. Right now I have four 4GB sticks and 4 1GB sticks so all DIMMs are full. Can anyone confirm this is the problem?
 
I don't think it is a problem- just normal operation. The logical conclusion is the more ram you have the longer the power on memory scan.
 
strausd said:
That's very interesting. Right now I have four 4GB sticks and 4 1GB sticks so all DIMMs are full. Can anyone confirm this is the problem?
Click to expand...

I don't think it's really a problem… per say ;)

I also don't shut my computer off that much if at all, but yes removing memory did decrease my boot time. Removing HDDs did as well and so did removing PCIe cards. I can't just take out addons for a fast boot.
 
Mine behaves the same way. It takes a good 10+ seconds before the chime sounds when I press the power button on my new 2.66 12-core. On my old 2006 Quad core, it chimed within 5 seconds usually. However, after the chime it definitely boots much faster than my old one. Of course, I have a OWC 120GB SSD as my boot drive on the 12-core, so that helps a lot. And just for reference, I have 24GB RAM (4x4GB, 4x2GB), all internal bays full with HDs, and a RocketRAID card installed.
 
I've only got 3 2GB sticks in mine and I can certainly say it boots much quicker than 17-18 seconds until chime. I've got an SSD in the 2nd drive bay now, but I had it in the optical bay for a few days and didn't notice any longer boot times.
 
The boot process can vary significantly based on the firmware and OS's need to enumerate, initialize, test, and load drivers for various components and peripherals. USB devices are particularly bad in my experience. Even the responsiveness of your router in assigning an IP address can be a factor.
 
Memory, number of hard drives and other hardware will definitely lengthen the boot time. My 1.1 Pro takes about 45 - 55 seconds from power on. But I also have several programs that are loaded at startup too. Six drives, 13 gb ram and other hardware, and sometimes external drives too.
 
I have the clone of your machine. In fact it was shipped the same day by Apple via Texas before heading back North....

I don't have a solid state drive or massive RAM (yet) and it sits for a long time after power on before the chime plays, similar to what you document. I don't think this has anything to do with the hardware configuration.

strausd said:
So far I love my 2010 Mac Pro. But I was up in the Mac lab the other day at my school and noticed how quickly the chime started. Whenever I start up my MP, it takes about 17-18 seconds for the chime to start. I have OS X to boot from an OWC SSD in the second optical bay and have selected it as my startup disk multiple times. Is this normal? The 2008 Mac Pros at school with the stock HD chimed in about 3-5 seconds or so.
Click to expand...
 
Later today when I get a chance I will take some RAM out and see if there is a difference to confirm it. But once it hits log in screen, everything is very fast thanks to the SSD.
 
cutterman said:
I had to troubleshoot a bad memory stick recently, and noticed that with more memory, the longer the delay before the chime starts.

So this delay must reflect a power-on memory test.
Click to expand...

I've just got a new 27" iMac with the SSD and 1TB HDD, and I was disappointed to see it takes longer to boot than my MacBook Pro with just an HDD. As I have 4GB memory in the MBP and 12GB in the iMac, this could explain it.
 
My new 6 core takes about 10-15 seconds from power button to chime, after that it's very fast getting to the desktop

12gb ram, OWC SSD + 4 additional internal HDDs

Peripherals attached to system:

Apple Keyboard (USB)
Logitech Mouse (USB)
D-Link USB Hub (USB)
Sandisk CF reader (FW800)

Plugged into the USB Hub:

Canon multifunction printer
Apple Universal Dock
Transcend Card Reader
 
My 2010 Hex is at least as fast or maybe a tad faster than my 2008 to boot to the desktop, but for some odd reason it takes much longer to get to the drives choice screen if you hold the option key down at coot. Way too long. I wish I could figure out why.
 
Delay between pressing Power btn and chime sound is POST time, like some of previous posters did mention. Since MP 2009 it's longer than in previous MP versions. There's nothing what user can do to decrease it.
 
I think, all is based on accessories and programs installed, if you make a clean install the machine will boot faster, when begin install programs become slower.
 
degl said:
I think, all is based on accessories and programs installed, if you make a clean install the machine will boot faster, when begin install programs become slower.
Click to expand...

Well its just from pressing the button to chime. Once it starts reading from the SSD its crazy fast.
 
Sometimes the delay is caused by looking for a startup disk. Try changing your startup disk in System preferences to another disk and back to the one you want. The pref file may have been damaged (or maybe the startup drive was never set).
 
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