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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > Switched my HD to the optical bay: 15 min first boot?

Switched my HD to the optical bay: 15 min first boot?
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Lateralus
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May 25, 2012, 03:22 PM
 
Bought an SSD and decided that a second hard drive would be cooler than the optical drive, so I bought the appropriate caddy and moved my traditional platter drive into the optical bay last night. Installation was fun, and afterwards I was subjected to a 15+ minute boot up while staring at a progress bar during the Apple logo'd boot screen. And this was after I had to tell the computer where to find the boot drive.

What the hell? Behavior in Finder was also sluggish for a while.

Repaired permissions, rebooted a few times... all seems completely normal now.

Anybody have an explanation for the weird behavior?
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Eug
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May 25, 2012, 09:52 PM
 
Which computer and which drive? There are compatibility issues particularly with SATA III drives in the optical bay.

https://sites.google.com/site/themacbookproproject/home

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DDAMBS0GB/

Special compatibility notes related to use of this product with 6Gb/s SSDs in the following machines:
2011 MacBook Pro 15" (Model ID MacBookPro8,2)
2011 MacBook Pro 17" (Model ID MacBookPro8,3)
OPTICAL BAY: The optical bay interface in these machines may either be SATA Revision 2.0 3Gb/s OR SATA Revision 3.0 6Gb/s. There is no way to specify/order this data interface with Apple, but you can confirm what interface/link speed version your optical bay offers via the Apple System Profiler.

Testing has demonstrated that Apple factory hardware does not reliably support a 6G (6Gb/s) Solid State Drive or Hard Disk Drive in the optical bay of 2011 MacBook Pros (ModeI ID8,1; 8,2; 8,3). If your OWC Data Doubler bundle comes with a 6G drive, you should ONLY install that drive in the main drive bay and utilize the Data Doubler to re-task your existing drive or install a new 3G SSD or HDD in the optical bay. PRE-2011 models can utilize a 6G drive in the optical bay, but will do so at a reduced 3G (3Gb/s) speed.

MacBook Pro 13" models: Apple does not support the use of 6Gb/s drives in the optical bay. While we have observed a high rate of success using SATA 3.0 6Gb/s drives in Apple 13" bays where 6Gb/s link is present, some systems may not operate properly with this setup. For guaranteed reliability/compatibility, we suggest 6Gb/s drives be used in the main drive bay only, and 3Gb/s hard drives or SSDs be used in the optical bay when a two-drive configuration is desired. We cannot guarantee proper or successful 6Gb/s drive operation in the Apple MacBook Pro 13" optical bay.

2008 MacBook Pro 15" (MacBookPro 5,1; 5,2; 5,3; 5,4; 5,5 and MacBook 5,1)
While a 6G SSD does function in a 2008 MacBook Pro 15" and 13" Macbook, it will only do so at SATA Revision 1.0 (1.5Gb/s) speeds rather that the SATA Revision 2.0 (3.0Gb/s) speed the machine can deliver. Should owners of these machines desire another SSD option, the Mercury Electraâ„¢ 3G SSD does run at the full SATA Revision 2.0 (3Gb/s) specification.
     
Lateralus  (op)
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May 25, 2012, 10:40 PM
 
It's a 2008 13", the first Unibody. I have no idea what the drive is (at work); though it's a 2009 mfr 500GB WD. And System Profiler shows the negotiated link speed as 3.0, whereas the optical was at 1.5.

Regardless; 1.5 even doesn't get anywhere near explaining a 15 minute boot time from the drive. I'm fine with the speed it's running at several hours after the fact, especially as a soon-to-be data drive. I'm just confused as shit over the initial behavior after the bay swap.
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reader50
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May 25, 2012, 10:49 PM
 
Perhaps fsck did a full scan of both drives for unknown reasons. Say, if it rejected the journals. But even then, 15 min is ridiculous.

Pity you didn't boot in verbose. Anything interesting in the boot log?
     
SierraDragon
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May 25, 2012, 11:46 PM
 
Maybe you were paging out to the HDD for some reason.
     
P
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May 27, 2012, 02:18 PM
 
Most likely is that EFI had trouble enumerating the drives, and now that it knows what to look for, it will find them again unless you change the setup again.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Nergol
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May 27, 2012, 02:44 PM
 
After I put in my data doubler, I had to zap the PRAM before things would work right. You probably should, too.
     
   
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