Help with NVMe Upgrade

[Allistah]

Hi there,

I have a Mid 2015 MBP 2.8. When I got it, it had an Apple SSD drive in it but it was only 512gb. With a fresh install of Catalina 10.15.5, that drive boots up from a cold boot to the login screen within 20-21 seconds of pressing the power button.

I installed a Sabrent 2tb drive with an adapter. The drive works fine and has been for months, but one thing I was never able to solve was that the boot times are now 50-51 seconds.

I tried fresh OS installs, I tried resetting the PRAM and SMC, I tried unplugging any peripherals, I tried not having power plugged in, I made sure it was set as the startup drive, etc. etc. Tried all sorts of stuff.

The progress bar gets to about 3/4 through and then has a long pause there and then finally moves on and hits the login screen around 50-51 seconds.

I'd like to add that it starts to boot just as fast as the Apple drive. It is just this long pause around 3/4 through where things just hang for a while. The Apple drive zips right through that area.

I can't figure this out and it just bugs the hell out of me. Does anyone have any idea what I should do to troubleshoot this?



Thanks in advance to those that reply..

-Alli

 

[MacRS4]

Is there anything else plugged in to it...? The reason I ask is that my iMac Pro pauses about 80% through the boot if I have a couple of USB-C devices plugged in. It's never really bothered me, but it is noticeable.

 

[Allistah]

Is there anything else plugged in to it...? The reason I ask is that my iMac Pro pauses about 80% through the boot if I have a couple of USB-C devices plugged in. It's never really bothered me, but it is noticeable.

I tried unplugging it all and there wasn't any difference. When I have the Apple SSD in there, even with the stuff plugged in, it boots up in ~20 seconds.
[automerge]1592950313[/automerge]
I read somewhere that if the drive was upgraded from HFS+ to APFS that there may be an issue. A couple people have said that if they completely blow away the drive and repartition with APFS that it somehow fixes things. May give this a shot and see if that helps. I could just ignore it but it bugs the hell out of me.

 

[Allistah]

...I'm also trying to determine if I'm focusing in on this and letting it bug me to the point where I just give in and buy a 16" MBP. LOL I really don't want to yet but I can't tell if my subconscious is trying to do it otherwise. haha

I'm backing up all my stuff now and will blow the drive away with APFS and see what happens after that. Will report back.

 

[Allistah]

I made sure to show all devices in DiskUtility. I Erased the root of the NVMe drive so it wiped everything. It took a long time to do that which I thought was interesting but it finally finished. Then I did a clean install of Catalina on it. Booted a few times in a row and now can boot within 21 seconds just like the Apple SSD drive. I did a fresh install in parallel to my old install and it still had the delay and 51 second boot time. The only difference at this point is that I completely wiped the drive with APFS and its now fast.

I'm restoring from a Time Machine backup now so I'll see if I retain that gain after it's done restoring the data.

 

[Audit13]

I'm not exactly sure what is causing the delayed boot but I have been running an Intel 600p on an early 2015 13" Air for almost a year and it's never had extended boot times. I started with High Sierra, then Mojave, and finally Catalina.

 

[Allistah]

I guess there are some cases where this bug hits people. The posts that I have read said that once they completely wipe the drive with APFS and restore a previous Time Machine backup, it fixes it. Sounds weird but it’s looking like this will fix it for me too. The backup is over the network so it’s taking forever.

 

[Audit13]

I have run apfs on an Intel 600p, hp ex900, Intel 660p, and Levar nm600. These are all running in early 2015 13 Airs that I upgraded for several people. These are not the fastest drives but don't boot any slower than the original Apple drives.

I personally don't think it's a file system issue. I think the NVMe drives boot faster on Catalina running apfs and file vault enabled.

Are you able to try the MacBook with another NVMe drive?

 

[Allistah]

Boot times were 51 seconds w/Sabrent 2TB
Swapping to an Apple SSD was 21 seconds
Sabrent with a fresh install in parallel of existing OS booted in 51 seconds.

Then I backed everything up and did a full wipe/erase of the drive to APFS.

Fresh install on Sabrent 2TB now has boot times of 21 seconds.

Only difference was a full erase/wipe of the partitions/drive

Fresh install before booted in 51 seconds.
Fresh install after full erase booted in 21 seconds.

Looks like something was wonky with the partitions from before and a complete wipe fixed it. I tried this because I found numerous other people that had the same problem as myself and this fixed it for them as well. No clue why, but it seems to have fixed it for me too. Even after the restore its still 21 seconds.

 

[Allistah]

Just wanted to follow up with this. The machine is still booting with a 20-21 time which is great. If your system boots up and pauses around 75-80% of the progress bar and then moves on, it may need to have all the partitions on the drive completely wiped and re-created. I'd still love to know why this happened, but I can't be too picky.. I'm happy that I fixed it. Still trips me out that fresh installs without the changing of partitions yielded the same result and only when the partitions were blown away did it fix itself. Man I'd love to know what the problem really was..

 

[MauriceG]

Just wanted to follow up with this. The machine is still booting with a 20-21 time which is great. If your system boots up and pauses around 75-80% of the progress bar and then moves on, it may need to have all the partitions on the drive completely wiped and re-created. I'd still love to know why this happened, but I can't be too picky.. I'm happy that I fixed it. Still trips me out that fresh installs without the changing of partitions yielded the same result and only when the partitions were blown away did it fix itself. Man I'd love to know what the problem really was..

I have more or less the same experience. In the beginning the boot time with an Intel 660p 2TB was very good (About 25 seconds, I never measured it). But after one of the MacOS upgrades, end 2019, it degraded to 55 seconds (MBA 2015 13” 2.9 GHz). I still don’t know why. Thank you for your advice, I will try it.

 

[MauriceG]

I have more or less the same experience. In the beginning the boot time with an Intel 660p 2TB was very good (About 25 seconds, I never measured it). But after one of the MacOS upgrades, end 2019, it degraded to 55 seconds (MBA 2015 13” 2.9 GHz). I still don’t know why. Thank you for your advice, I will try it.

Ok, I tried it. Boot now takes about 45 seconds after a fresh format and installl. Good enough, but not great. I also tried the same with an original ssd from a MBA 2015. Than it boots in about 22 seconds. Has anybody analyzed the log file? It contains errors with both ssd’s. (E.g. executable file not found, but inspection learns that the file is present and has the correct attributes). The errors differ per ssd I have run Apple diagnostics and other tools. All say everything is ok.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Not sure if anyone tried this, but when you clone your SSD to a new one and boot from it, it will take a lot longer.
You then log in, go to system preferences / startup disk, and choose the disk listed there as the startup. It doesn't matter if they are named the same already. Once you do that, boot times are back to normal.

I had the exact same issue with my newly acquired MBP mid-2015 15" and also cloned to a 2TB Sabrent Rocket SSD. Upon power on, I got the chime sound then a black screen for about 30 seconds, then Apple with progress bar. Very slow. After setting the startup disk properly and rebooting, it's very, very fast now. Chime to Apple and progress bar is like 5 seconds then progress bar to login is another 10 seconds.

I think the pause it macOS trying to find the old drive which it still thinks is the startup.

That would explain why a wipe/fresh install worked.

MauriceG -- your scenario is different than the OP -- clone to new SSD vs macOS update. While you may have a similar symptom, the cause is different.