USB drive delays boot or wont boot at all

Witcher1979 · 3 May 2011 at 13:39

Hey guys.

After getting this new board for a Q6600:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-220-GI

I have figured out when this WD external 2tb HDD is plugged in I get a really slow delay while the bios is doing its stuff before booting, the light on the drive is flashing, once done it will boot 50% of the time. Sometimes I have to press the reset button to get it to boot from the internal drive with my os's.

If I unplug the WD 2tb USB drive it will boot first time everytime really quick.

I am not at home right now but would adding a HDD delay in the bios fix this? I dont mind a delay but having to press reset sometimes is annoying.

Keeping the USB drive plugged in is a must for me as it streams media all over the house.

Thanks for yet more advice

Kaeo · 3 May 2011 at 14:27

This is an issue with a lot of external hard drives tbh. Had one for ages that would completely stall post indefinitely if it was plugged in when I started up. Never found a fix for it either, seems some of them just do it. Some places suggest a BIOS update to fix it. Wouldn't mind some advice on it myself.

/hijack

DennisMenace · 3 May 2011 at 19:11

I used to get this problem on XP with a host-powered USB drive. It never got resolved 100%, but things improved after I did the following :

Assign a fixed drive letter (E:, F: etc)
Make sure the USB drives aren't listed in the boot order in BIOS
Disable energy-saving modes (some HDDs override this anyway)
Disable wake-from-sleep on all USB devices
Turn off autorun (delete autorun.ini)

Not really sure what did what (if anything), but some did something (sometimes).

Witcher1979 · 4 May 2011 at 19:16

Hi

Well I cured it for now at least. I removed the USB drive from the port at back of mobo, then I fitted it to my 7 port usb hub. The hub has its own power so does the drive, but it seems to be booting fine now.

When I fit it back on the PC, it hangs again.

Weird seeing as it is no different apart from powered hub. Unless the drive power adapter is getting weak, its only 2-3 months old though.

Cr416 · 7 May 2011 at 23:15

It's just the way the drive is configured, I turned my bios settings to run all drives in AHCI and it boots faster even with a USB drive as it picks it up under this.

The reason for the long boot may be related to your boot options? Check under boot options that your primary hard drive is the only thing selected and everything else is deselected or disabled for best performance.

After the above, all I can recommend is taking the drive out when starting the computer up lol.