Slower boot speeds with "regular" HDD's connected


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So I recently finished my (part)new build and have noticed a lot slower boot times when my storage HDD's are connected. I have an SSD boot drive and when installing Windows and the first few boots (installing updates etc) the boot time was, as expected, very quick. However, once I started connecting my storage drives, regular HDD's, the boot time seemed to increase considerably. None of my HDD's / SSD are new to the build, they have all come from the last machine.

 

I understand that this is probably normal but could anyone shine a light on why exactly it happens? I would be interested to know the technical reasoning for it.

 

My current storage setup is not ideal and I am looking to replace most, if not all, of the drives in the not too distant future.

 

My current setup is;

 

Boot drive: Intel 520 SSD

Storage drive 1: Samsung Spinpoint F1 - 1TB

Storage drive 2: Samsung Spinpoint F1 - 1TB

Storage drive 3: Samsung Spinpoint F4 - 2TB

Storage drive 4: WD Green - 3TB

Storage drive 5: WD Green - 3TB

 

Its way more than I need nowadays, I used to have 3-4 machines backing up to mine so needed a lot of space but this is way overkill now. Also, one of the Samsung drives is failing. Probably because they are sh!te and if I could go back in time I would go nowhere near them. I am also annoyed at myself for getting the WD Greens instead of, say, a Black. They don't seem to like streaming media across the network, I guess down to the power saving features of them.

 

So I guess my questions are, is there anything I should consider when deciding on the new setup which could help improve the boot time? Ie, drive speed, number of drives in the setup etc?

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Have the same issue. I posted about it here but nobody replied :D

I have a Seagate 2TB which is dead slow but I have no files that need loading from there during boot. So I am not sure. Is your page file on those disks?

 

 

Lets hope we get some response now then! 

 

3 WD Black 4 TB drives? 

 

The only downside to that is the cost.  Even on sale at 200 USD, that's over 600 with tax but MY GOD the storage! 

 

Yes they would be nice! But would they have any effect on the boot speed?

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Sorry should have mentioned I did try that when I first noticed the problem. Did them one at a time, each drive seems to have the same effect individually. Also forgot to mention pagefile is on SSD, not HDD.

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I would remove the hard drive that's dying.  A while ago, I had a 750 GB start to die on me and it made my PC take FOREVER to boot.  Transfer any data you need off that drive and disconnect it.

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And what do you get in the event log? What OS are you booting for that matter? Windows (flavor), Linux, BSD, BeOS? What?

How do you have so many sata connections? Is it an addon card, off the MB - if so what MB? Did you try something that tracks your boot like say soluto or something like this boot time analyzer https://trials.maas360.com/forms/register_service_m.php?I=T_BOOT

What does increase considerably mean to you, what was the good boot time to you? Did it go from 30 seconds to 40? Or 3 minutes?

You sure your actually booting off the SSD, Are they all marked active? Lets see your disk manager, curious what sort of partitions you have on these old disks since you say you brought them over from your other system.

post-14624-0-68438100-1419250581.png

That is if you are running windows? ;)

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<snip>

 

I can't see anything that looks relevant in the Event Log (then again I don't use it that much so may not be deciphering it properly).

 

Running Windows 7 x64 and yes, all SATA connections on MB. It's the Asus Maximus VII Formula (has 10 x SATA ports and 2x xSATA Express ports!). I have not tried anything like that no, I will give the link you supplied a try, thanks. 

 

Boot time went from about 20-25 seconds to 50 seconds (from pressing the power button to being presented with the Windows login screen).

 

Definitely booting from SSD, installed Windows on it first with all other disks disconnected. All the others have always been storage drives, not boot drives.

 

Disk Management screenshot attached;

 

post-47587-0-68703100-1419272672.png

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It could be the fact that when Windows 7 boots it scans all the devices attached. The more devices you have attached the more it needs to scan. (I'm guessing this from you saying that each drive adds a similar amount of time onto the boot).
If it is this, then upgrading to Windows 8 will help as it caches the boot devices and eliminates the need to rescan for them as Windows 8 basically hibernates on each shut down.

 

It might also help to remove these drives from being in the boot order list in your BIOS.

 

[0] http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/how-windows-8-hybrid-shutdown-fast-boot-feature-works/

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/olivnie/archive/2012/12/14/windows-8-fast-boot.aspx

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Running Windows 7 x64 and yes, all SATA connections on MB. It's the Asus Maximus VII Formula (has 10 x SATA ports and 2x xSATA Express ports!). I have not tried anything like that no, I will give the link you supplied a try, thanks. 

 

You might of connected your SSD to a  Jmicron port and not a Intel port and you might want to check that AHCI or RAID is enabled.

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well those partitions look good..

But dude I wouldn't say that 50 seconds is end of world.. I too would guess part of the boot time is just that you have a LOT Of disks attached.. You can look in boot history what is taking the longest to boot. That tool I linked to should tell you.

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