8TB Ironwolf adding significantly to boot time

Big Giant Head · 12 Jun 2019 at 07:58

Hey everyone,
First time poster here and hoping to find some answers to my annoyingly frustrating problem.

I have a system here which has the following drives:
M.2 Samsung 960 NVMe 500GB
Samsung 860 SSD 500GB
Samsung 4TB SSD
Seagate Barracuda 2TB
Seagate Ironwolf 8TB

Here's the rub, boot time with just the M.2 is around 12 seconds which is pretty sweet. Add the other SSDs and it's around the same, maybe 13 or 14 seconds. Add the 2TB, still looking good at 16 seconds but add the 8TB and suddenly we're looking at 40+ seconds.

I've tried all combinations with the drives including just the M.2 and the 8TB but still up around 40 seconds. I've even plugged the 8TB into three other machines and all are affected the same way so it's that drive that is the issue.

This is a brand new drive, only has media files on it and no trace of an operating system. I've run Seatools on it and it passed the short and long generic and SMART tests.

It's like the BIOS is waiting for the the drive before it proceeds, do these drives take longer to spin up or be acknowledged by the BIOS?

I've reached out to Seagate via their phone support but they were uncertain and have said they'd get back to me. Hoping someone here has an idea of what's going on, even if what's happening is expected behavior. If it is I'll have to convince the owner of this :rolleyes:

Thanks in advance and all advice/suggestions welcome!

Eliot · 12 Jun 2019 at 08:51

I think this may be useful:
https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...tem-with-ssd-boot-dr.1292645/page-2?view=date

Confirm that the HDD isn't in the front of the boot order as well

Seems like it can sometimes be caused by windows backup as well ("previous versions")

Big Giant Head · 12 Jun 2019 at 11:15

Thanks Eliot, I'll have a closer look at that thread tomorrow but a quick glance tells me it may not help as a lot of those things seem very Windows 7-centric - but I'll have a close look regardless.

As for the boot order the Windows 10 install was done with no other drives connected and this drive was added to the mix after the install. The original drive failed the tests so was replaced under warranty so you can imagine my surprise to find the slow boot remained :/

Oh and just to be sure I looked and the boot order shows the M.2 as the first device. I even tried it with all other boot options disabled.

ginjaninja · 3 Jul 2019 at 14:03

I have noticed (but not gotten to the bottom of it, understanding wise) with the advent of uefi, m.2, secure boot era of technologies (on Win 10, asus x99) , there can be a massive difference in boot times depending on whether the pc has all its stars aligned and is happy to fast boot and difference is very noticeable, 4 seconds to boot vs 30 seconds. not very helpful for the OP but just venting my frustration over what seem like a technology which is easy to break/perform significantly worse.

For me the less hardware in the case the more likely i am to get a fast boot, the only definite prerequisite i have found for windows fast boot is a uefi gop bios on video card...havent seen hdds affect boottime.

Is the HDD on an 'external' controller either in pcislot or addon to the main chipset?

bloodiedathame · 3 Jul 2019 at 14:06

Is the BIOS error checking the drive?

Big Giant Head · 3 Jul 2019 at 21:51

Update: After much banging my head against the wall I was finally able to track down some info from the data sheet which states the typical time to power on is, wait for it, 23 - 30 seconds! This correlates exactly with the extra boot time so while there's nothing that can be done about it, at least I have an answer.
Because it's designed as a NAS drive performance is the focus rather than fast spin up. Makes sense I guess

EsaT · 4 Jul 2019 at 08:28

Big Giant Head said:
Because it's designed as a NAS drive performance is the focus rather than fast spin up. Makes sense I guess

I don't think hamster spinning it up has any performance...
5400RPM WD Reds are also designed for NAS use and they do their spin up/start up like any normal HDD without jamming PC for half minute.

Big Giant Head · 4 Jul 2019 at 22:21

EsaT said:
I don't think hamster spinning it up has any performance...
5400RPM WD Reds are also designed for NAS use and they do their spin up/start up like any normal HDD without jamming PC for half minute.

Yes but the data sheet states the typical start time as 23 - 30 seconds so maybe it's just a Seagate thing.

Vince · 4 Jul 2019 at 22:36

Big Giant Head said:
Yes but the data sheet states the typical start time as 23 - 30 seconds so maybe it's just a Seagate thing.

I don't think its just a seagate thing, I have a 8tb ST8000AS0002 (seagate 5400rpm enterprise drive) in my desktop and on the back of this thread decided to test boot times with it disconnected. It made no difference at all. I don't think any of my mech drives even spin up on boot as the first time I use the drive in windows is when it chugs for a few seconds while I hear it spin up.

Machine in question is running an X399 Taichi motherboard with fast boot on.

bledd · 5 Jul 2019 at 06:23

Which motherboard do you have? Which BIOS version?

Big Giant Head · 5 Jul 2019 at 11:22

Vince said:
I don't think its just a seagate thing, I have a 8tb ST8000AS0002 (seagate 5400rpm enterprise drive) in my desktop and on the back of this thread decided to test boot times with it disconnected. It made no difference at all. I don't think any of my mech drives even spin up on boot as the first time I use the drive in windows is when it chugs for a few seconds while I hear it spin up.

Machine in question is running an X399 Taichi motherboard with fast boot on.

Sorry, I should have said maybe it's just an Ironwolf thing. When two from two do the same thing I tend to think it's normal for that drive. I didn't at first but after reading their specs I changed my mind.

EsaT · 5 Jul 2019 at 11:52

Big Giant Head said:
Sorry, I should have said maybe it's just an Ironwolf thing. When two from two do the same thing I tend to think it's normal for that drive. I didn't at first but after reading their specs I changed my mind.

Still it's really weird thing.
In my 25 years of PC hobby have never heard of HDD needing such time for start up.
Time it takes for my WD Red RAID1 data array to spin up from power saving and respond is in class of half dozen seconds.
3TB Barracudas (before one of them died and replaced also remaining) didn't take any longer.

And as it does same also in three other PCs, it's highly unlikely to be some incompatibility.