Slow startup after SSD install

[pechnatunk]

Hi,
A while ago I updated to High Sierra because it was a requirement to then upgrade my hard drive to an Aura SSD 512.
Since then I periodically get major "wig-outs" where music starts chopping and the mouse is very unresponsive and jumpy.
It is usually fine after a reboot, but one thing I have noticed is also since then it takes about a full minute to get to the desktop - 36 secs after the chime to display the Apple logo then a progress bar until the user options appear at about the 52 sec mark.
Previously it used to take - I'm guessing under 10 sec and the progress bar would only display after automatic updates or something.

It's almost as if it is initially still searching for the old SSD.

I have been through all of the steps in the stickies - Basic OS X troubleshhoting, SLowdown steps, macattorney etc.
Still no different.

At the end of the day - I'm not much of a power user and the glitches are pretty few and far between, and I don't power cycle my mac that often, but these quirks have me thinking my Mac is not running at it's optimum.

Has anyone heard of this before and/or are there any other diagnostics/optimisations I can look at?

TIA

 

[Raz0rEdge]

What Mac do you have? Did you do a fresh install of OS X onto the SSD or was it a backup restore? Have you run software like Blackmagic to test the speed of the SSD to ensure that it is indeed working as expected? Open and keep running Activity Monitor and when you notice the slowdown, look at the CPU and Memory tabs to see who the high users are.

 

[ferrarr]

Also, go into System Preferences > Startup Disk and make sure you select the SSD drive. Then restart your Mac to confirm you are started up from the SSD.

If that does not help, perform an NVRAM reset, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063.

 

[pechnatunk]

Hi, Thanks - Sorry for the slow response.

My Mac is a Macbook Pro Retina 15 inch, mid 2014, 2.2 GHz intel i7 with 16 Gig 1600 DDR3.

I duplicated my old HD using a program call SuperDuper - I remember having difficulty doing it the exact way that OXC says on their instructions and videos, so searched online and found SuperDuper.
I haven't used BlackMagic but I have check the SSD using Apple's diagnostics and it found no issues.
I the old drive is in an external case - and not connected so System Preferences > Startup Disk is pointing to the correct drive.

I'll keep activity monitoring open and try NVRAM test.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh - I just clicked the link and realised that I already HAVE done NVRAM reset.

Are there any other things I can try?

 

[ferrarr]

Did you see at the bottom of the NVRAM page, the recommendation for SMC reset? Give that a try, and also remember, sometimes it may take multiple attempts to get these to work.

Have you tried Safe Mode, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262?
Also, try Apple Diagnostics, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731.

Also, this "System Preferences > Startup Disk is pointing to the correct drive" is the reason I said to select the drive and restart the MBP after selecting the drive in System Preferences. When the Mac is already started up, and there is only one startup drive, that will be the default drive, at that time. You need to make sure the next time you restart/startup, the Mac knows what drive to startup from, so selecting and restarting will confirm that the internal drive is set as the default startup drive, even if you connect another disc/disk that is bootable.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Beyond the slow startup, is it slow after as well when reading/writing files? You should use blackmagic to ensure that the entire drive is working properly. Since it's an SSD stick its entirely possible to short the chips out if you aren't careful.

 

[pechnatunk]

Ah! Yes I see what you mean - I swear I had done this a few times but I guess I must have been just closing the system preferences down rather than restarting from from there.
That has more-or less halved the start up time - 34secs, or 27secs without any peripherals, which is good enough for me - still slower than it used to be I think but decent.

As far as the sudden glitches/slow-downs - I guess I'll have to see if they re-appear and check out the activity monitor.
I did an SMC reset for good measure but I don't think i did much.

Here's the black magic scan:




Thanks!

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Looks like from a performance perspective your SSD is working as it should, so that's one less thing to worry about. From a startup time perspective where are you timing it to? Login screen, post-login screen desktop?

 

[pechnatunk]

I'm timing it from when I hear the chime to when the apple logo first appears, and then continue timing while the progress bar loads, up until when the usernames appear. Clicking on my username loads the desktop in less than a second.

Initially it was - 36sec and 52secs.
Now after I have set the correct drive and a couple of other resets, with no peripherals it is 14secs and 27secs, with my peripherals connected it is 16sec and 34sec.
So there has been a big improvement, but still slower than El Capitan with my old 256 SSD. Which although I never timed it, I would say it loaded in 5-10secs - and never showed a progress bar unless some automatic updates had been installed.