Macbook Pro 17 i7 early 2011 takes forever to load Sierra OS

[Tore Kvalheim]

I recently got a second hand Macbook Pro. It was preinstalled with Sierra on a 60GB SS. 4GB RAM.

It took several about 5 minutes to boot up. Old and sluggish SSD I thought. I then took 2 x 240GB SSD´s and upped the RAM to 16GB, arranged the 2 disks in a striped array.

Started up, expecting the fastest MB Pro ever. Not so !!! The grey screen with the Apple logo and progress bar comes up for about 15 seconds, the the screen goes black for a second or two, then the logo and the progress bar appears again. It still took several minutes to load, and when I finally logged in the response was very sluggish, and every seem to react in a slow motion.

Once in about 20 start-ups, the machine was ready in about 20 seconds.

As someone else mentioned, in safe mode things act normal. I have tried cmd+option+p+r, made sure the Raid__SSD was checked as the startup disk.

However, when I start up pressing the option key, I get the choice of RAID1 and RAID2????? Tried both, does not seem to make any difference.

Is there any diagnostic I can run to fix this, or should I just try to get my money back?

 

[honestone]

Welcome, Tore! Sorry to hear you are having issues. It is perplexing that after an 8 times increase in space (and with SSDs!), and a 4 times increase in the RAM, that you would still be encountering such slow issues.

First, what exact Macbook Pro model do you have?

Secondly, what brand was the original SSD drive, and what brand are your new ones?

Third, how "full" is one of your 240 gig SSDs?

Fourth, given that you now have 480 gig of space, I assume you have a lot of free space. Is that valid?

Lastly, are you using V10.12.1 of Sierra? That update came out last week, and you can get it from here:

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1897?locale=en_US

(I always prefer to download and install such updates myself, versus going through the App store and doing an automatic update). I'm not sure if it will make much difference.

I recently purchased 2 Samsung 850 Pro 512 gig SSDs, installed one of them inside an Orico case, connected it via USB 3.0, to one of my Macs, and Erased, Formatted, and Partitioned it with 3 partitions. 2 of the partitions are used for backing up each of my Macs (each of them have a 256 gig SSD). Well, after doing SuperDuper! backups for each on my Macs to the respective smaller partitions, and given that SuperDuper! makes a bootable backup, when I rebooted each of my machines from their respective backup, it was fast!

I'm not sure if it's worth a try on your part to install one of the SSDs inside a similar (or I'd recommend the same) external case, do a SuperDuper! backup to it, and then reboot your Mac from that backup. At the very least, it should tell you that the SSD is OK. However, as I am sure you know, different SSDs have different Read and Write speeds. Drives made by Samsung have the highest Read and Write speeds in the industry, and that is one reason I chose such drives.

 

[honestone]

Oops! I see from your System Specs that you have an early 2011 MacBook Pro. So, that answers the first question I posed above.

 

[Tore Kvalheim]

Old SSD is an 60GB Intel SSD 330 series.

New disks are Kingston HyperX Fury. I have only installed the OS and a program or two, so there is plenty of space.

I had the latest update up to 30 minutes ago. I am now downloading Lion and will install on a single disk, in order to see if the RAID is the issue.

Seems to take its time downloading - nearly 7 hours to go

 

[honestone]

Old SSD is an 60GB Intel SSD 330 series.

New disks are Kingston HyperX Fury. I have only installed the OS and a program or two, so there is plenty of space.

I suspect these are the Kingston drives you have:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104484

Note that the Read Speed is "only" up to 470MB/s, and the Write Speed is "only" up to 220MB/s. The read speed is not bad, but the write speed is slow, in terms of SSD standards. My Samsung 850 Pro 512 gig has a Read Speed up to 550 MB/s, and a Write Speed of up to 520 MB/s.

Still though, you should be seeing better performance.

I had the latest update up to 30 minutes ago. I am now downloading Lion and will install on a single disk, in order to see if the RAID is the issue.

Seems to take its time downloading - nearly 7 hours to go

Man, that is definitely slow! I wonder what kind of internet connection you have.