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How fast does your primary Mac boot?

How fast does your primary Mac boot?

  • 1-10 seconds

    Votes: 13 13.8%

  • 11-30 seconds

    Votes: 36 38.3%

  • 31 seconds - 1 minute

    Votes: 35 37.2%

  • 1 - 3 minutes

    Votes: 10 10.6%

  • 3 minutes or more

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    94
wrldwzrd89

wrldwzrd89

macrumors G5
Original poster
Jun 6, 2003
12,110
77
Solon, OH
Anyone here have a Mac that boots really, REALLY fast? Have a Mac that seems to take forever to boot? Just wondering what other people's boot times are? This is the place to find out.

Please, post your Mac's specs (CPU speed, number of cores/CPUs, RAM, etc.) so the numbers can be compared more easily. You never know, I might do a school report on this topic some day.;)

My primary Mac, a MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz 2 core 17 inch display, with 2 GB of Apple RAM and the stock 160 GB hard disk, boots incredibly fast - from initial appearance of gray screen to usable desktop in 3 seconds.:D
 
Mine boots in 30 seconds. It's an '06 C2D iMac, 128MB Radeon X1600, 500GB HDD, 1GB RAM, Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.10.
 
iMac Core 2 Duo 2.16 Ghz 2Gb Ram 250 Gb HDD (35 Gb free with 8 Gb Bootcamp partition)

10 seconds*

*It would take about 10 seconds to desktop however I don't have automatic login in so it takes longer because i have to click on my username and enter my password.
 
Your poll doesn't account for everybody. What is your Mac boots in 10.5 seconds there is no option for that! Or if it boots under a second! Or what if it doesn't boot at all! It should be

0 to 10 second
>10 to 30 seconds
>30 to 1 minutes
>1 to 3 minutes
>3 minutes


I'm just teasing.

The Stig
 
I just tested my iMac.

- 0 Secs, clicked the ON button.
- 30 Secs promoted to type password.
- 33 Secs typed it and pressed enter.
- 36 Secs OS X loads and i am ready to do whatever i want.

Thats pretty fast imo, i do not know how some people have less then 20 secs boot time, i do not believe them.
 
xUKHCx said:
That must be very annoying when it comes to install software etc. Personally i'd shorten it.
Click to expand...

I have a 13 character password too, and by now typing it in is muscle memory. Im sticking with that password for a while too, because it is a funny non word, and i can remember it easier than a random series of numbers and letters.

Also, my mac has a relatively slow boot time compared to the rest of you guys. It takes about 30 seconds to get to the password screen, and then another 30 seconds for the system to become useful.
 
It's hard for me to tell, since it happens once every few weeks and usually the reboots from software updates are "funny" because of changes to the system....

But 3 seconds is amazing! So you press the power button (and not from safe sleep), you get grey screen with Apple logo -> login window in three seconds? :eek: Wow....
 
Veritas&Equitas said:
I don't want to call you a liar, but until I see a video of that (not in fast forward), I simply cannot believe it. 3 seconds?
Click to expand...
Mind you, that was immediately after a PRAM reset, and not a normal cold boot... but it was, in fact, 3 seconds.

A normal cold boot takes about 15 seconds. Still fast.
 
Mine takes about 10-15 seconds. But I only ever boot when there is an update, which takes longer, or when coming back from Vista in bootcamp. The only normal boot I can think of is when I first turned it on. I was suprised by how fast I was at the desktop ready to go.

When Vista boots it takes about 3 minutes. And once I'm at the desktop its still slow as hell while it loads who knows what. The only programs I have installed in Vista are games, and that it.

Still Vista runs better on my Mac then any PC I have ever seen.
 
0 seconds - press power button
12 seconds - spinning wheel appears
23 seconds - login screen appears
40 seconds - desktop/dock fully loaded

...on a 2GHz Macbook. How can anyone's Mac boot in 10-15 seconds when the POST on mine is taking 12 seconds just by itself?
 
if you really want a fast boot time then i suggest having two partitions. one partition with everything on it except your docs, media files etc. and then defrag the first partition with idefrag

first partition
-applications
-library
-system
-users (excluding documents movies, music, pictures folders in home folder)

second partition
-documents
-movies
-music
-pictures

the only con using this is the documents, music etc folders wont keep there folder and sidebar icons so you have to give them your own and there is a little configuring to get save locations for apps corrected.

ive used this approach this and my desktop is fully loaded within 25 seconds after pressing the on button. 7 cog spins and about 2 seconds on the load screen.

specs: 2.0 ghz core duo macbook pro 1.5 gb ram 80 gb D
 
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