External SSD slow boot - please help

[Dolbjam]

Hi All.

I bought an external SSD and enclosure (see specs below). However with clean Ventura installs on both drives, the Fusion Drive is 30 seconds to boot to login, whereas the SSD is 50 seconds to boot to login.

Tried using Monterey and it’s the same.

Holding CMD + v on boot, the Fusion Drive flies through all the lines without any stops, whereas the SSD boot stops a few times, notably at “boot\system\library\kernelcollections\bootkernelextensions.kc “

Anyone have suggestions how to stop the boot pausing at this step?
Thanks so much,

Ventura 13.6.7

2017 27” iMac with internal 1TB Fusion Drive

Crucial 1TB T500 7300mb/s SSD nvme

USB C 3.2 Gen 2 nvme enclosure (ugreen) - I’m going to try a thunderbolt 3 capable enclosure next

 

[Mike Boreham]

Are you using a USB 3.2 gen 2 cable?

 

[Dolbjam]

Are you using a USB 3.2 gen 2 cable?

Yes I assume so, as I’m using the usb c cable that came with the enclosure which is advertised as 3.2 gen 2, and speed to read and write is 1000mb/s which I believe is normal, it’s just the boot that gets stuck in a few places (mostly during the apple logo). It doesn’t take long to get to the apple logo, so it’s not an issue of selecting the startup drive which I’ve done. Thanks

 

[Bigwaff]

Holding CMD + v on boot, the Fusion Drive flies through all the lines without any stops, whereas the SSD boot stops a few times, notably at “boot\system\library\kernelcollections\bootkernelextensions.kc “

Anyone have suggestions how to stop the boot pausing at this step?

"bootkernelextensions.kc" is kernel cache. The pauses are most likely the kernel cache rebuilds/updates. Try booting into Safe Mode off the USB external SSD. Should delete several kernel caches. Boot normal several times and see if boot times off USB external SSD improve.

Safe mode, caches and CacheDelete

What does Safe mode do to all those service caches managed by CacheDelete? Does it still check your boot disk too?

eclecticlight.co

 

[Dolbjam]

So I bought a thunderbolt 3 enclosure, and it’s a lot faster to boot! Hurray!…

However, now I’m getting random kernel panics, sometimes shortly after boot, sometimes when running light applications. Just freezes and reboots.

Different errors when it happens:

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff8005fa091a): watchdog timeout: no checkins from watchdogd in 90 seconds (11 total checkins since monitoring last enabled)

Panicked task 0xffffffa037fe7258: 211

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff801d5245be): initproc exited -- exit reason namespace 2 subcode 0xa description: none