2011 MBP - something changed. Need some assist.

OK. It will be difficult to describe what I'm about to attempt to describe. Makes more sense looking at it and listening, but oh well.

So I had a 2010 17" MacBook Pro. In it I installed an X-25M SSD. By the time I had settled into that MacBook, its boot speeds were so fast it shocked me - like instant gray apple, three gear spins, then login window. 10-12 seconds sometimes.

Fast forward to 2011 17" MacBook Pro. Same SSD, it's been fully wiped and reinstalled with the version of Snow Leopard that should be on here. Yet the boot speeds are noticably slower. Not like a minute or anything - I would say around 20 seconds or thereabouts. And I'm not sure why. Here's where it gets hard to describe.

On the 2010, when I pressed the power button, two seconds later I would hear the SuperDrive. Halfway through the SuperDrive sound I would hear the Apple chime. Immediately I would see the light gray screen, about a second later I would see the gray apple. About two seconds after that I would see the gear spin. Three or so gear spins later I would fade into the login window.

On the 2011, when I press the power button, three seconds might pass before I hear the SuperDrive. The entire SuperDrive sound goes by (figure two seconds), a delay, THEN I hear the Apple chime. It goes to a light gray window for about 10-15 seconds, then the Apple logo sits for about 5 seconds, then the gear spins 11 times, then it fades into the login window.

My question: For anyone who has a 2011 MacBook Pro with a SSD, Apple or not - and I want to hear from all sizes - does yours take as long to get to the point of the gear spinning? I think the 11 spins might just be a need to buy a new SSD, but I'm more concerned about the steps to get to the gear spin and why they're so abnormally longer than before.

Already done SMC resets and NVRAM/PRAM zaps and all of that.

EDIT: So going off of an old recommendation I disabled the Airport. Now, when it boots, I get 5 gear spins. So it seems that part of the delay is attempting to connect to Airport BEFORE boot - which irks me as it's really not necessary at that point. However, the gray screen before the Apple logo is now upwards of 15 seconds long which negates any speed improvement at the gear spin. So something is definitely loading at that point where it's just chugging. Verbose only reveals AppleUSBMultitouchDriver stage being slow, but not sure how I can do anything about that.

EDIT 2: So I yanked one of my 4G sticks. That didn't do anything to help the problem - figured it might be a long RAM check but it doesn't seem to have sped up any. Did a Free Space Erase, and after two reboots, I think I'm a bit faster. Nowhere close to how fast it was on the 2010 model...Now it's about 8 seconds of blank gray, 5 seconds of gray apple with no gear, 6 gear spins or thereabout. So you figure about 20 second boot. Which is double what I was at with the 2010 but half what I was at before the Free Space Erase. Something about this hardware generation just isn't playing nice.

 

TRIM is already enabled. That's not the problem either.

I know it's hardware related but I don't know what hardware or why. I really don't want to go down to the Apple Store if I don't have to - but I swear it's driving me nuts. I rarely shut down my machine or restart it, but I need to make sure that on the odd times I do restart due to a RAM issue or something that it comes up right away. There have been times I've done it at customer sites and the fast restart has helped to keep the visit going.

 

First thing I did when I reinstalled the software. I'm 100% up to date at this point except for things like iWork and iLife.

 

Already selected. Checked that as well.