Thread: Mac mini boot

I'll time mine tonite, but I'm quite sure it's less than a minute.. I did however reinstall OS X to my liking, but I've got the loaded version.. 1.42GHz/512MB/80GB/Bluetooth/Airport Extreme..

MikeH: I'd suggest swapping out your RAM to a 512MB stick, and if you don't have a clean install, that can't hurt..


Anyone know if there's a difference in data density between a 40gb drive and an 80gb drive? Or does the 40gb drive just have half as many platters?
In either case, these have got to be the slowest, cheapest laptop drives used in new hardware today..

Does anyone else have that clicking sound? It sounds like the arms banging against the stops.. The first mini I had did it every few minutes, this one does it once or twice in a few hours. I think they were part of an abused shipment or something..

So I just booted mine without the ethernet plugged in, and with a dvd in the drive spinning too, it booted in 50 seconds. I feel good about that.

Heres a ? for ya.... why does my mini copy faster from a dvd than a cd? I mean about twice as fast to... It seems awful slow copying data from a cd. It wasnt scratched or anything that I could tell. Any ideas?

Edit: it does speed up as it goes, which is normal, but doesnt even peak as fast as the constant dvd copy rate of almost 2mb/sec.

With no disk in the drive and ethernet connected it took 50 seconds exactly, once again, after proper shutdown. I also have the 1.25 with 512 ram, airport and bluetooth. I have not reinstalled OSX... I think I'll wait till I upgrade.

For some reason mine sits with a black screen for about 1min5sec, then the grey screen appears. From that point the boot time is about 50 sec. It looks like it's waiting for something for that first minute...??

Originally Posted by MikeH

For some reason mine sits with a black screen for about 1min5sec, then the grey screen appears. From that point the boot time is about 50 sec. It looks like it's waiting for something for that first minute...??

Strange.
Have you spliced into or modded the power wires? If so, do you think that can affect proper startup?

I am using the standar AC adapter that came with the Mac. It does have a connector on the DC side, but it's a straight pass-thru.

I would reinstall OSX if that were happening to mine. And if it persisted, Id have Apple take a look while its under warranty.

OSX startup speed is based on a couple of things.

Did you shut it down properly last time? meaning did the computer clear its cache. If not youll hear yer hard drives click alot while it moves the cache around.

Do you have alot of RAM? The basic startup doesnt happen in RAM but once you get past the grey spinning lite looking thing and onto the login window, the amount of RAM you have matters. OSX uses caching alot, so your HD is sometimes being overworked and it slows down your startup. More RAM means quicker caching and faster startup times.

Everything else is hit and miss, you cant turn off extensions like you could in OS9, and if under 60s is a long boot time, go read some of the PC suckers threads on slow startup times.

Plus a mac from sleep to working is 10s max, more like 5 seconds. PC from hibernate? Sometimes minutes... we got it good.

AND ill reiterate my flaming point, buy a second battery, isolate it and keep yer mac sleeping when yer not using it. Then its ready to go right when you slam the door.