Decrease Macbook Pro boot time

I recently upgraded my SSD (Solid State Drive) from a 60GB to a 120GB. For reference I am using a OCZ Vertex 3 and I have a mid 2010 Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo running Lion with 8GB of RAM so having too little RAM is not an issue. I only use the SSD for the OS and Apps. My home folder, iTunes and all other files I keep on the original HDD which I have mounted in the optical bay. I started doing some research after updating to the larger SSD and I found that the boot time increased to about 45-50 seconds. Ok, now some of you reading this may think that this is fast. Well it’s not when your using a SSD as your boot drive.

So what I started to find out is that by doing some basic house keeping can keep my Mac running good these methods were not doing much for my boot time. I started with running Clean My Mac. This is a paid app but they do have a free version to try. This app cleans up some of the junk files that can clutter up the OS like un-needed fonts, but again didn’t do much for my boot time. I moved to Onyx which is a similar housekeeping app but with more in-depth functionality. I suggest doing some research on how to use this app as it can clean up more that you might want. Another option can be to reset the PRAM by shutting down the computer and immediately after powering it back on holding the Command-Option-P-R keys until hearing two start-up chimes then releasing the keys. This method can reset the clock back to a default date for some models but in my case this was not the result I was looking for.

I then started to look into the apps that opened on start-up. By going into the System Preferences App>Users&Groups>Login items tab any apps that start-up on boot will be shown here. Simply selecting the app in the window and clicking the – (minus) button that app can be removed from start-up. Doing this can increase start-up time due to less processes being run at start-up. But the few apps that I have, I actually want to start-up with my Mac and again I found myself in square one.

I also took a look at the items on my desktop. Having too many items on the desktop and not in a file could also be the culprit of a slow boot time but, I only have one file there and its a rather small file so this also was not the answer.

Finally I found some info that made a difference. By going into “Startup Disk” in the System Preferences app I selected the boot drive (which was the only drive that it showed) then I clicked the Restart Button. By doing this I basically told my Mac that this was the drive to boot from so it didn’t have to search for it. Not sure exactly why this did the trick but it did. Now I have a 15 second boot time when I start-up my Mac.

There are more avenues to take when trying to increase the robot time but these are the methods that I tried and what worked for me. So I hope this may help some of you looking for the same result. If you have any other methods on this we would like to hear from you. Just leave a comment below.