Seagate Momentus XT Slower with Lion?!?

[Michael73]

I wanted to put some feelers out there to see if others are experiencing what I am.

I have a 2011 MBP. Not long after I bought the machine in March I replaced the OEM 500GB HDD with a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT (with firmware SD25). Boot time improved remarkably. When timed, from the moment I pushed the power button to my login screen was ~25 seconds. Once I typed in my password, the remainder of the OS load time was 8-10 seconds.

Ever since I upgraded to Lion the initial cold boot time has lengthened to about 35 seconds and once I entered my password the OS load time is 12-15 seconds.

Anyone else notice a slowdown in boot time with a Momentus XT drive since installing Lion?

 

[gr8tfly]

Do you have Lion restoring apps and windows on restart? That could be some of the difference. I have an XT, too, and I can't say one way or the other whether boot times have changed. Restarts in SL were variable - probably because I usually only restart when installing updates. That will change both what the OS has cached, and what the XT caches in SSD.

Try disabling the restore functions on restart; then restart 4 or 5 times and see if the boot times decrease.

IMO, you'll have a better experience overall if you just close the lid and put the machine to sleep when not in use. Wake is almost instant, and you'll be right back where you left off. Then restart times are moot. There's normally not any reason to shutdown, unless you expect it to be sitting unused for an extended period of time. Over the period of a day, sleeping will use a minimal amount of battery life.

The XT will still give you improments in performance, it just might not be as easy to measure since the SSD caching will be spread out among the different tasks you do.

 

[Prodo123]

SD25, 500GB Momentus XT
Lion boots slower than Windows 7 Ultimate x64 but no R/W performance hits.