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morriss00... morriss00...
 
M$1 May 23, 2009 05:50 PM

My computer is extremely slow to boot when I have my external drives connected. Why is that?

I have two 1T drives, and 1 120gb drive.
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dannyjohns... dannyjohns...
 
 May 23, 2009 06:03 PM
First guess would be the computer checks for boot sectors on the external drives when it powers up.

I would go to Bios (CMOS) setup and check the BOOT ORDER to see if maybe it checks usb devices first before internal hard drive or cd rom drive.

If it does, disable the usb devices or have the computer boot from internal hard drive first.

Also check to see if "boot from other device" or 'boot from usb' is enabled somewhere. Turn it off if it is enabled.
Asker's Rating:
• You were the first to suggest a USB possibility so I am choosing your answer as best


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Helpful: williamwaco

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morriss003 morriss003
 
May 23, 2009 06:17 PM
Good suggestion. Thanks.

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robbrown robbrown
 
May 23, 2009 06:31 PM
Morriss, check out reply number 3 here:
http://www.geek.com/forums/topic/win-xp-slow-boot-40because-of-usb-drive41

"Ray Baby" has some exceptionally good advice including:

"If you have a less than superb external drive enclosure, that will make it slower.

If you have a cheap USB cable or one that is crimped, or has bad shielding, you can have significant signal distortion.

If your External USB draws its power through the cable, it will be slower

Be sure you have the most up-to-date firmware on both the laptop and the external USB drive

The device could be taking a long time to be recognized by the computer's device manager.

Use this KB article to run through many USB problems:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310575 "

Beyond Ray's advice, I would do the following things:

Run a full scan disk from a couple of different manufacturers to ensure that there are no bad sectors, etc on any of the drives. This will take A LONG time on your large drives, but it will be well worth it.

Defragment each disk.

Since you have a lot of storage there, you may want to look into building yourself an independent NAS device. Check this out: http://www.freenas.org or this plug-and-play unit from Linksys http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3281671&csid=_21

If none of these things work, we'll need more information including specifics about your operating system, drive make and model numbers, etc.
Source(s):
I'm an I.T. pro with years of experience.


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Helpful: williamwaco

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morriss003 morriss003
 
May 23, 2009 07:04 PM
Thanks for the advice.

"The device could be taking a long time to be recognized by the computer's device manager."
I think that this is the problem. There is a long wait before the "esc, f1,f2, etc" comes on.

"Since you have a lot of storage there, you may want to look into building yourself an independent NAS device."
I have one of these, also. This device works well and has never given me much of a problem.

BTW, I think that you were the one who turned us on to Lifehacker. I appreciate that also. I still have a dozen or so computers from my leasing business, XP Pro's. I look for ways to use them, and Lifehacker has some interesting suggestions. The schools have passed me by in hardware, so I can't give them to the schools. Sometimes I run into a family that does not have a lot of money, so I can pass one out there.

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robbrown robbrown
 
May 23, 2009 07:18 PM
I'm glad that this helps!

I like Lifehacker too! It's a great blog!

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yagelski yagelski
 
May 24, 2009 02:48 AM
Oooh! With the need for this much storage space, you have the ideal application for a Drobo connected via ethernet with a DroboShare!

http://www.drobo.com/

http://koefod.us/thomas/img/drobo.jpg

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cascadehus... cascadehus...
 
May 24, 2009 04:46 AM
I'd just like to confirm that this is a common problem and seems rather inexplicable. One example; I had a computer that would take about 10 minutes to boot if I had my ipod plugged in, and it wasn't because the BIOS was set to boot from external devices.

If you can't avoid booting with the devices plugged in, one solution would be to avoid rebooting your computer, either by leaving it on, or putting it into sleep or hibernate mode when you're not using it.

Otherwise the other info/suggestions are all good.

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morriss003 morriss003
 
May 24, 2009 06:52 PM
@yagelski hey, thanks for the link. I had heard of this, but never went there. Really amazing thing. The problem with my present NAS system is that it is formatted with a proprietary file system, so if it crashes I can't stick the hard drive into an external case and get the data.

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morriss003 morriss003
 
May 24, 2009 06:56 PM
Here is my report. It was not the external hard drives that were causing the problem. I removed the power from these drives and tried again. Same thing. I have a USB hub and that was the problem. Unplugging the USB hub caused the computer to boot immediately. After that, I was able to replug the hub and everything was okay. So now if I want to boot quickly, I must unplug the hub, boot and then replug.

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galaxybrow... galaxybrow...
 
May 25, 2009 01:04 AM
It could be several things, check for virus with a anti virus software first ?

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Unhelpful: christhomson

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