Decrease startup time with standard HDD?

[RedCroissant]

Hello everyone.

I have a 2009 20" iMac that I recently upgraded to a 3TB 7200 rpm HDD. I have also noticed that it takes longer to boot since I did this.

Would partitioning the drive to have a boot partition and then a storage partition decrease the startup or not? Thanks in advance for any help/advice.

And no, a SSD is not an option since I don't have the money for it and the capacities/price are not where they need to be for me to consider them.

 

[-tWv-]

No, AFAIK creating a separate boot partition won't make much of a difference. It's also kind of a hassle because apps automatically want to put their data on the boot partition and you have to manually change settings for each one to have it default to the larger partition. I think that you will just have to deal with slower boot times if an SSD is not an option.

I think your only other option would be to buy a small SSD for your boot drive and then put the 3 TB drive in an enclosure and use it externally as the data storage.

 

[RedCroissant]

No, AFAIK creating a separate boot partition won't make much of a difference. It's also kind of a hassle because apps automatically want to put their data on the boot partition and you have to manually change settings for each one to have it default to the larger partition. I think that you will just have to deal with slower boot times if an SSD is not an option.

I think your only other option would be to buy a small SSD for your boot drive and then put the 3 TB drive in an enclosure and use it externally as the data storage.

Thanks for responding! I did consider a SSD for a bit and even considered a hybrid drive, but in the end, the 3TB was the best storage value for my money. It does seem like a hassle and not something I feel like dealing with for an extended time. The boot time isn't that much longer than when I had a 320GB drive in there, but it is noticeable. oh well. Thanks again.