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Apple Updates kill SSD Boot Time

ryannazaretian

ryannazaretian

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 21, 2008
649
5
Mississippi
So far, this has been repeatable with the last 3 iTunes Updates, Safari update, and OSX 10.6.6 and 10.6.7. Every Apple update absolutely murders my SSD's boot time from 1.5 gear spins to over 12. To fix it, I have to do a combination of the automatic cleaning with Onyx and Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner, as well as changing the owner back to admin (sudo chown root:admin /). All 3 must be performed or else it will stick to its >12 spins. I also reset the PRAM the 3 times as recommended by Apple to fix issues.

Does anyone else experience this? It seems a little silly that every Apple update does this, but no other updates to applications such as Firefox, Chrome, and other 3rd party software hurts it. It literally takes my boot time from <5 seconds to >30 seconds.

Thanks in advance.
 
terzinator said:
what's a "gear spin"? One revolution of the beachball?
Click to expand...

When it boots up, it has the loading gear, right? That's the spinning gear.

1321674320_466dba7951.jpg
 
Here: I experienced the same problem.

MacBook 4,1 Crucial RealSSD c300 128 gb.

My boot times definitely went up since 10.6.7 :eek:

Shame on you, apple.

I have already tried to reset the pram, cleaning the caches (applejack + rebooted using hold-down shift key), but I think everything is voodoo. It did not get any faster.

10.6.7 became slower!
 
ryannazaretian said:
So far, this has been repeatable with the last 3 iTunes Updates, Safari update, and OSX 10.6.6 and 10.6.7. Every Apple update absolutely murders my SSD's boot time from 1.5 gear spins to over 12. To fix it, I have to do a combination of the automatic cleaning with Onyx and Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner, as well as changing the owner back to admin (sudo chown root:admin /). All 3 must be performed or else it will stick to its >12 spins. I also reset the PRAM the 3 times as recommended by Apple to fix issues.

Does anyone else experience this? It seems a little silly that every Apple update does this, but no other updates to applications such as Firefox, Chrome, and other 3rd party software hurts it. It literally takes my boot time from <5 seconds to >30 seconds.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Definitely have this happen!

Can you please explain to someone less educated in Macs than you how to perform what you describe so I can run it at the speed intended again!

Thanks!
 
Richie271 said:
Definitely have this happen!

Can you please explain to someone less educated in Macs than you how to perform what you describe so I can run it at the speed intended again!

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Like beefcoder, I also have a Crucial C300, but the 256GB version.

First off PRAM. With the computer shut off, press and hold Command+Option+P+R until you hear the Chime 3 times.

Download Onyx
Go to Automation, select all, then Execute.

Restart.

Download Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner

Go to the Maintain tab, select all, then Run.

Restart.

(Some of this is repetitive, like the Repair Permissions and Run Maintenance Scripts, but it doesn't hurt to run them twice.)

Then the next step is to go to terminal and run these commands.
cd /
sudo chown root:admin /
Click to expand...

"cd /" brings you to the root of the volume. I don't believe this step is needed, but it won't hurt, and it assures me that it applies it to the system root.

"sudo chown root:admin /" changes the owner (chown) of the root folder "/" to "root:admin".

Restart, and hopefully it's fixed.

You'll have to enter your password if you have one for almost every step.

I'm not responsible if this totally messes up your computer or you experience data loss. I take no responsibility for anything!

Hope this helps. Still wish I knew why Apple's updates do this.
 
Thanks, worked for me...

After installing the update to 10.6.7, boot time slowed from 14 seconds to 24 seconds. I followed the steps in the last post and I'm back down to 14, even 13 sometimes.

Thanks,
Nick
 
Awesome post. I haven't really noticed a tremendous slowdown in my MBP's boot times, but my iMac and my wife's MBP both seem to have slowed down. There's no harm in running these scripts so I'll give 'em a shot this evening!
 
ryannazaretian said:
"sudo chown root:admin /" changes the owner (chown) of the root folder "/" to "root:admin".
Click to expand...

This really helped. I did Onyx, SLCC, PRAM x3, gear spin was 18. Read the thread again, ran the command, rebooted, gear spin dropped to 6. Thanks!

Intel Core2Duo 2.53gHz 4GB 9600M GT
OCZ Vertex 2 60GB TRIM-enabled
 
Last edited:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

If u have the apple ssd, is this applicable?
 
currins said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

If u have the apple ssd, is this applicable?
Click to expand...

^ Yeah I was wondering the same.
 
Works for Apple SSD

I have the 128GB Apple SSD... steps listed by OP worked for me, i.e. cut boot time from 24 seconds back down to 14 seconds, from gong to desktop with safari and mail loaded.

Nick
 
As a separate point of view. The system in my sig below is running 10.6.7 and I just used Trim enabler to enable Trim. I tested this gear turn at startup out and it takes 2.5-3 gear turns before I get a login screen. It's ridiculously fast and I didn't run any of the other stuff being discussed on here. Not sure if I'm just a fluke.

:D
 
Just installed 10.6.7....the first two bootups took 2.5-3 gear spins....then after reading this thread, I wanted to see if it changed...bootup only took 1 gear spin...and a total of 22 seconds from desktop - shut down - restart - desktop again...:cool:

Just give your SSD time to readjust on its own and your startups will get quicker. :apple:
 
This also happens to me but it sorts itself out. I tend to just leave it, and after a while it just picks up speed again - I put it down to the SSD re-organising the data on the drive??
 
ryannazaretian said:
So far, this has been repeatable with the last 3 iTunes Updates, Safari update, and OSX 10.6.6 and 10.6.7. Every Apple update absolutely murders my SSD's boot time from 1.5 gear spins to over 12. To fix it, I have to do a combination of the automatic cleaning with Onyx and Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner, as well as changing the owner back to admin (sudo chown root:admin /). All 3 must be performed or else it will stick to its >12 spins. I also reset the PRAM the 3 times as recommended by Apple to fix issues.

Does anyone else experience this? It seems a little silly that every Apple update does this, but no other updates to applications such as Firefox, Chrome, and other 3rd party software hurts it. It literally takes my boot time from <5 seconds to >30 seconds.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Which SSD?

I've the Momentus XT, on my MBP running 10.6.7, and it boots up in roughly 5 seconds.
 
My boot time was up some 10s on a C300 until I zapped the PRAM. Now it is nice and below 5s
 
I found that it's ONLY the wrong ownership of / that is causing slow bootup with my SSD.

Upgrade to 10.6.7 may have caused the ownership change, but definitely I am seeing tools like Disk Utility change it when I just did a "erase empty space" to trigger a TRIM.

I've updated my /etc/rc.local to include the chown command, and if this bites me again, a reboot will correct it.

Try this at your own risk, who knows what may happen if Apple decides that / should have new ownership and you are using my workaround.
 
Just my 2 Cents

Just installed my OCZ drive in optibay. here
been tweaking around, and finally i have been able boot up in 6 gear spins with the stock 5400rpm HDD in the default bay containing the Home directory.

6 gear spin was only achieved when i check Ignore ownership on the HDD, total boot time from pressing the power button to booted in 23sec

without the check, 30gear spins and i didn't even bother to time.

unibody Al-Macbook (late 08)

==================

after booting in safe mode and out. i noticed the mounting of my optibay SSD is Disk1, is that the why im now counting more gear spins to 22 again. before it was at Disk0 for the 6 gear spin boot. and i cannot force mounting the SSD as disk0. i read about editing fstab. is that the best i've got to ensure mounting priority??

Last edited by hekokimushi; 27 May 2011 at 06:47 PM. Reason: gone back to long gear spins after gone into safe mode:

===================

After further OnyXing... Clearing out Boot Cache... follow restart puts me back to 6gear spins, and SSD is recognised as disk0 again. will live until further upsets
 
Last edited:
ryannazaretian said:
Like beefcoder, I also have a Crucial C300, but the 256GB version.

First off PRAM. With the computer shut off, press and hold Command+Option+P+R until you hear the Chime 3 times.

Download Onyx
Go to Automation, select all, then Execute.

Restart.

Download Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner

Go to the Maintain tab, select all, then Run.

Restart.

(Some of this is repetitive, like the Repair Permissions and Run Maintenance Scripts, but it doesn't hurt to run them twice.)

Then the next step is to go to terminal and run these commands.


"cd /" brings you to the root of the volume. I don't believe this step is needed, but it won't hurt, and it assures me that it applies it to the system root.

"sudo chown root:admin /" changes the owner (chown) of the root folder "/" to "root:admin".

Restart, and hopefully it's fixed.

You'll have to enter your password if you have one for almost every step.

I'm not responsible if this totally messes up your computer or you experience data loss. I take no responsibility for anything!

Hope this helps. Still wish I knew why Apple's updates do this.
Click to expand...

********** incredible. Boot time this morning<25 secs. Now <15 secs. Almost half.

Very thankful to you.
 
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