New Mac Book Pro Slower boot than Old Mac Book Pro

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I have two Mac Book Pro 15". The first one is a work computer and is slightly older than my new one. The new one I bought about a month ago and seems very slow to boot up from a shut down.

The Old mac's specs are:
mac book pro 15" (Old style silver keys)
2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Due
4GB ram
320GB hd 7200rpm

The boot time till login screen for this mac is 32 seconds.

My new Mac Book Pro has the black keys and has the following specs:
Mac Book Pro 15" (New style black keys)
2.4 GHz Intel Core i5
4GB Ram
320GB hd 5400rpm

The boot time till login screen for this mac is a whopping 69.9 seconds.

I do not believe the difference in hard drives rpm speed here is to blame. Also both are running OS X (10.6.4). I have tested both with xbench and the newer mac performs better even on the hard drive writes and reads. I can provide the xbench results if needed. What can I do or look at the see why there is such a performance difference? Should I bring my mac to the apple store and have a technician look at it?

Thanks, I'm new to the forums and relatively new to mac, but am well versed with Windows systems and Linux Systems and Networking.
 

pigoo3

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Should I bring my mac to the apple store and have a technician look at it?

If you feel something is wrong (as it seems you do)...then yes. Your mind will be at ease if Apple finds nothing.

- Nick
 

chscag

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The difference in boot up time may be related to what's trying to run on startup. Check your login items on the new MBP and also take a look in:

MacIntosh HD/Library/StartupItems/

And contrary to what you mentioned about HD rotation speed, the 7200 RPM drive should cut the boot up time somewhat, even if by a small amount.
 
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The difference in boot up time may be related to what's trying to run on startup. Check your login items on the new MBP and also take a look in:

MacIntosh HD/Library/StartupItems/

And contrary to what you mentioned about HD rotation speed, the 7200 RPM drive should cut the boot up time somewhat, even if by a small amount.

I only have three things booting up on start up:


******:StartupItems ******$ ls -la
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 5 root wheel 170 Sep 26 21:49 .
drwxrwxr-t+ 59 root admin 2006 Aug 28 21:14 ..
drwxr-xr-x 5 root wheel 170 Sep 26 21:49 BRESINKx86Monitoring
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 Aug 19 14:14 FanControlDaemon
drwxr-xr-x 5 root wheel 170 Aug 5 07:57 VirtualBox

VirtualBox is on both machines so I doubt that is to blame and this issue was occurring before I installed Fan Control.

Also what I meant byt Hard Drive speed was that I don't believe a 7200rpm vs 5400rpm drive means twice the boot time, it may mean 5-10 seconds faster boot hence the reason why a faster hard drive is better. I just don't think the 1800rpm slower HD will yield a 35 second longer boot time.

Also I took it to the Apple store and had a tech look at it. He ran through some diagnostics but everything checked out. What he recommended to me is to back up all of my files and re-install the OS and start from scratch. I might just embark on that route this coming weekend.
 

pigoo3

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If Apple already checked it out...and everything is fine...then there really isn't much else to say.:)

- Nick
 
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MacBook Pro 17" Fall 2009 MacBookPro5,2 Intel Core 2 Duo 4 GB RAM
Have you tried to run in 64 bit mode?

My 17 inch Mac Book Pro runs a lot faster now that I have it set to run in 64 bit mode.

When I first acquired my first Apple in Nov. 2009, it was automatically set to boot into 32 bit mode. The hardware and Snow Leopard were then both capable to running in 64 bit mode. Apple was concerned with some third party programs might have problems with 64 bit, even though, as I understand it, Snow Leopard will run the application in 32 bit mode if the program requires it. My thought is that any third party program has had enough time to create a 64 bit program and get it working.

One can see the mode by clicking on the Apple on the upper left hand side of the desktop. 'About this Mac.' 'More Info' 'Software' the heading on the right pane should be, 'System Software Overview' look down the list to see what is listed in '64 bit Kernel and Extensions'

'No' means it is in 32 bit mode. 'Yes' means it is 64 bit mode.

One can restart into one mode or the other by holding down either the 6 and 4 keys or the 3 and 2 keys while booting.

Someplace is a little app that will change the computer to start in 64 bit mode automatically.

I would be curious to see if some of the more experienced forum members would make observations about running 64 bit mode or not.
 
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My 17 inch Mac Book Pro runs a lot faster now that I have it set to run in 64 bit mode.

When I first acquired my first Apple in Nov. 2009, it was automatically set to boot into 32 bit mode. The hardware and Snow Leopard were then both capable to running in 64 bit mode. Apple was concerned with some third party programs might have problems with 64 bit, even though, as I understand it, Snow Leopard will run the application in 32 bit mode if the program requires it. My thought is that any third party program has had enough time to create a 64 bit program and get it working.

One can see the mode by clicking on the Apple on the upper left hand side of the desktop. 'About this Mac.' 'More Info' 'Software' the heading on the right pane should be, 'System Software Overview' look down the list to see what is listed in '64 bit Kernel and Extensions'

'No' means it is in 32 bit mode. 'Yes' means it is 64 bit mode.

One can restart into one mode or the other by holding down either the 6 and 4 keys or the 3 and 2 keys while booting.

Someplace is a little app that will change the computer to start in 64 bit mode automatically.

I would be curious to see if some of the more experienced forum members would make observations about running 64 bit mode or not.

I tried this and the boot speed did not change. I should be reinstalling the OS sometime this weekend once I setup my backup solution.

In addition I noticed one app I have did not work while in 64 bit mode. MacFuse did not work.
 

bobtomay

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15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
70 seconds does not seem right on any Mac. Are you getting any slow downs / pauses while using the machine?

I'd also be dumping all the startup items. You can't get a real feel with this issue without doing so.

Although, a big difference in boot time is definitely just the difference between the 5400 & 7200 rpm drives.

When I changed out my stock 5400 for the WD black 7200, I did a SuperDuper! clone to the drive. So we're talking about identical setups and startup items. Boot time on the stock at that time was just under 50 seconds, put in the new drive, boot time was under 30 seconds.
 
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the cralia

I want to upgrade the drive, is it worth it to go all of the way with an SSD or just go with a high end 7200 rpm drive?
 

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I want to upgrade the drive, is it worth it to go all of the way with an SSD or just go with a high end 7200 rpm drive?

Lots of pro and con regarding SSD drives. My personal opinion is that for now it's probably better to go with a good high end 7200 RPM drive. SSD drives are still premium priced, not TRIM supported in OS X (TRIM is supported in Win 7), and some have had firmware problems. The best bang for your $ (at least for now) is a good high end 7200 RPM drive.

On the pro side, they're fast and can take rough handling that a platter based standard drive can not.
 
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I stopwatched mine, 40sec from power button to desktop with two apps ready to use. Mail and Safari. There are two other small apps at startup but hidden.
 
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Lots of pro and con regarding SSD drives. My personal opinion is that for now it's probably better to go with a good high end 7200 RPM drive. SSD drives are still premium priced, not TRIM supported in OS X (TRIM is supported in Win 7), and some have had firmware problems. The best bang for your $ (at least for now) is a good high end 7200 RPM drive.

On the pro side, they're fast and can take rough handling that a platter based standard drive can not.

Can you recommend a good 7200RPM HD?
 

bobtomay

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The two most recommended are the WD Black and the Hitachi Travelstar.

I've had the WD for well over 2 years, it's been a good and silent drive.
Some with the WD have complained of excess vibration and moved to the Hitachi and been happy with it.
 
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If you've used startup disk to startup with another volume, you should double check that startup disk is now set to startup with your internal HD.

I have had good experience with the several Hitachi travelstar HD's I have owned.
 
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You can hold down cmd-v when booting to see what your Mac is doing. Do you shut down your Mac correctly? If you don't you could be spending time in fsck checking disk.

I have a 2.8GHz C2D with a 7200 RPM 500GB drive and it takes 47-55 sec to get to a login screen.
 
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I stopwatched mine, 40sec from power button to desktop with two apps ready to use. Mail and Safari. There are two other small apps at startup but hidden.

Can you give me the specs on your laptop? Interested in which model, old vs new style and the hard drive speed and cpu speed. Thanks!
 
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Can you give me the specs on your laptop? Interested in which model, old vs new style and the hard drive speed and cpu speed. Thanks!

2010 MBP 13"- 2.4GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD 7200rpm Hitachi

I also had the 2009 MBP 13" 2.26GHz C2D with the same specs, it starts up 40-45 seconds
 
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So i got my mac fixed. I brought it back to another apple store and it took a full minute plus 30 seconds to boot in front of the person next to another mac book pro which took 34 seconds or so to boot. They tried a bunch of things to no avail. After basicly saying i don't want your laptop unless you can fix it they took it in and reinstalled the os and was able to get it to boot at around 34 or so seconds after I set it up.

So now I started the process of reinstalling my apps. This time I have installed each one by one and then retimed the boot. I found that pdanet for tethering my android phone raised my boot time to 45 seconds. With that said pdanet was promptly uninstalled. Do not install that app on your mac.
 
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Back to my old 2.2GHz C2D MB after selling my MBP and wondering what my next Mac will be :)
So i got my mac fixed. I brought it back to another apple store and it took a full minute plus 30 seconds to boot in front of the person next to another mac book pro which took 34 seconds or so to boot. They tried a bunch of things to no avail. After basicly saying i don't want your laptop unless you can fix it they took it in and reinstalled the os and was able to get it to boot at around 34 or so seconds after I set it up.

So now I started the process of reinstalling my apps. This time I have installed each one by one and then retimed the boot. I found that pdanet for tethering my android phone raised my boot time to 45 seconds. With that said pdanet was promptly uninstalled. Do not install that app on your mac.

Or stop timing your boot time ;P
 

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