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Just installed...Momentus XT Boot Time

C

catgo

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 8, 2007
81
7
Miami, FL
Hello, I just installed a 500GB momentus xt drive on my late 2009 macbook pro, I used to have a seagate 7200.3 drive before and my boot time (from pressing of button to dock) was about 37 seconds.

I installed the new drive 1 hr ago and tested boot times 5 times and they have all been from 50 secs to 1:10 secs. I used carbon copy cloner to clone my old drive to the XT but I was wondering why this might be happening....


Any ideas anyone?
 
I've been researching this drive as well, and read a review that said using CCC can cause it to run slow. I can't seem to find the review now though. They said for best performance you should reinstall OSX from scratch, then use a Time Machine backup to restore.
 
smeg36 said:
I've been researching this drive as well, and read a review that said using CCC can cause it to run slow. I can't seem to find the review now though. They said for best performance you should reinstall OSX from scratch, then use a Time Machine backup to restore.
Click to expand...

Hello, yes, it seems like a problem that won't be fixed over time. My problem comes at the first 30 secs, between the apple chime and the actual logo appearing on the grey screen, before it took about 2 secs for the logo to appear, now it takes more like 25. It would be a pain to do a new install but if it continues to perform like this, it might be my only choice.

Thanks
 
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catgo said:
smeg36 said:
I've been researching this drive as well, and read a review that said using CCC can cause it to run slow. I can't seem to find the review now though. They said for best performance you should reinstall OSX from scratch, then use a Time Machine backup to restore.
Click to expand...

Hello, yes, it seems like a problem that won't be fixed over time. My problem comes at the first 30 secs, between the apple chime and the actual logo appearing on the grey screen, before it took about 2 secs for the logo to appear, now it takes more like 25. It would be a pain to do a new install but if it continues to perform like this, it might be my only choice.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Make sure to post back here if you do. If and when I get one I'd like to know your results.
 
smeg36 said:
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Make sure to post back here if you do. If and when I get one I'd like to know your results.
Click to expand...

Well I decided to do the fresh install of Snow Leopard and then proceeded to restore all my info and programs from a time machine backup. All I can say is what a difference! Boot time (have only booted 2 times at time of post) has gone down to 33 secs, from the 1 min+ I was getting before the fresh install. I guess the best way to swap drives to the XT is to do a fresh install of the OS and then restore from time machine. According to some articles, the drive is supposed to get faster within the next day or so, so i'll report back if I see any significant boot time reductions

Overall I'm quite satisfied with the drive, applications launch much faster (photoshop cs5 went from 14 s down to 6) and itunes opens up almost immediately with a 600 song library.

Hope this helps you on making your decision.

Good luck!
 
can you tell me how is it vs your previous drive noise/vibrate/battery life?
 
Thanks for the info- I'd noticed exactly the same result after using Carbon Copy Cloner will definitely try a fresh OS install and then time machine, &c. I don't suppose you could let me know whether you did a straightforward restore from backup job or manually?

Very happy with the speed improvement otherwise though- just wondering, did you notice any extra boost after this?

Thank you!

p.s. Had the drive for a couple of weeks now, noise and vibration really aren't noticeable- battery has taken a fair hit though- I'd say 1.5+ hour at the very least but ymmv
 
About the CCC thing -- is there evidence out there that using CCC to prepare a ordinary new drive can lead to slow boot times? Or maybe just for the XT?

I ask because I've used CCC for this three or four times, and have noticed what seemed to be boot time slowdowns. But I never put a stopwatch on it, so it was always impressionistic. But I definitely was aware that something didn't seem quite as fast.

I'd rather not test it by doing an entire reinstall, which is why I'm asking.
 
catgo said:
Well I decided to do the fresh install of Snow Leopard and then proceeded to restore all my info and programs from a time machine backup. All I can say is what a difference! Boot time (have only booted 2 times at time of post) has gone down to 33 secs, from the 1 min+ I was getting before the fresh install. I guess the best way to swap drives to the XT is to do a fresh install of the OS and then restore from time machine. According to some articles, the drive is supposed to get faster within the next day or so, so i'll report back if I see any significant boot time reductions
Click to expand...

What you try to do is not really helpful to your use of the computer. You are basically optimising the drive to boot fast. But how often do you boot your Macintosh in real life, outside benchmarks? This drive has 4 GB of SSD used as a very fast cache. If you reboot ten times in a row to measure the speed, then all the data needed for a reboot will be in that cache, reducing the amount of space available for the things that you really need. So while booting gets faster, other things might get slower.
 
Just get an SSD if you're that fussed about boot times. The XT is a tortoise in comparison.
 
gnasher729 said:
What you try to do is not really helpful to your use of the computer. You are basically optimising the drive to boot fast. But how often do you boot your Macintosh in real life, outside benchmarks? This drive has 4 GB of SSD used as a very fast cache. If you reboot ten times in a row to measure the speed, then all the data needed for a reboot will be in that cache, reducing the amount of space available for the things that you really need. So while booting gets faster, other things might get slower.
Click to expand...

Accepted that this isn't an issue worth worrying about, its just that from experience (yes, I tried exactly this to see whether it'd change the slower than before boot-time) continual re-booting had no effect; Given the boot time has gone up despite a faster drive (irregardless of the solid slate component) I think its worth looking into and not a case of mis-placed optimisation.

neteng101 said:
Just get an SSD if you're that fussed about boot times. The XT is a tortoise in comparison.
Click to expand...

Not so much fussed about boot-times- more getting what we paid for :D
 
Shockre said:
can you tell me how is it vs your previous drive noise/vibrate/battery life?
Click to expand...

I've been using the drive for about 5 hours today and can't say i notice a difference regarding noise and vibration compared to my old drive. There is absolutely no vibration or any noise coming from the drive. Boot times are around 28 s and app launching is cut in half competed to my old 7200 rpm drive.

Overall I'm very satisfied with my purchase and I believe it is a very solid choice when comparing its price to ssd's.
 
Smultie said:
Make sure the new disk is properly set as the startup disk.
Click to expand...

This post actually helped me fix a problem I didn't even know I had.

I recently upgraded my stock drive with a 500GB 7200rpm drive and my boot time more than doubled. I couldn't understand why, but I didn't sweat it, because it was STILL a faster boot than my PC (lol).

It seems that after I put in the new drive, it had to be selected as the boot device in the System Settings. I figured it would be by default, but it doesn't do that. I had to go in and manually select it. Now my boot times are faster. About 30 seconds flat instead of ~45 seconds.

Thanks Smultie. Simple and short comment in this thread, but it just helped me a lot.
 
Just installed Momentus XT also and could not understand boot time of 57 seconds till I read this old post about setting the new drive as start disk.

Thank you old thread ...... boot up times now 23 seconds :)
 
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