HDD causing very slow boot times

[Kaoss]

tl;dr - Windows hanging at startup at pulsing GUI for ~40 seconds. Fine if HDD is disconnected and only SSD hooked up. Everything on the HDD functions perfectly fine in desktop and is not corrupted in any way. Boot order is correct, AHCI, drivers are correct. Second HDD shows up in UEFI as connected, but does not show up as a boot option, which it used to.

Hi guys, after two months of experiencing very slow boot times after installing a WD Caviar Green 2.5TB HDD in my build, with Windows installed on a Plextor M5S 64GB SSD, and trying every possible fix aside from reinstalling Windows myself, I've decided to ask for some much needed help. I originally posted on tomshardwareforums but didn't receive a single piece of help. Hopefully I'll be able to get a few pointers/tips/diagnosis on what my problem could be.

Specs:

MSI 970A-G46
AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE @ 4.0GHz
Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 1GB
Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1 2G
Kingston HyperX blu 8GB
WD Caviar Green 2.5TB
Plextor M5S 64GB

Windows was installed on my Plextor M5S SSD without the HDD connected. I installed the HDD after Windows completed installation. The first few days of bootup were lightning quick, the "Starting Windows" animation couldn't even finish loading before Windows loaded. After I started putting files onto my HDD, mostly music and Blu-ray rips and games, bootup became extremely slow. The "Starting Windows" screen would hang (but still be pulsing) for about 50 seconds before loading Windows, and even after a full disk check + defrag I was still getting above 35 seconds on the animation screen.

Boot order is correct and optical drive is disabled in boot, AHCI mode is enabled on my SSD, msconfig has nothing that could affect bootup.

It is worth noting that my HDD does not show up in my MSI UEFI. Before it would show up as WDxxxxxx etc. but now it doesn't even show up for reasons that are beyond me.

It is also worth noting that if I disconnected the HDD, the bootup process is lightning quick.

I have tried multiple SATA ports, multiple SATA cables, booting up in every single possible mode that Windows allows you to bootup in to no avail. As long as the HDD is connected, I hang on the "Starting Windows" animation for ~35-40 seconds. After bootup everything functions just as normal and nothing is slow at all however.

I've tried disk checks, parameters, UEFI boot order, defragging, moving all files off from my HDD to no avail. I am seriously out of ideas!

 

[Dessert Tears]

Your description makes me think of my experience in [thread=2305369]this thread[/thread], but my HDD is 5 years old with overall performance problems.

 

[Elixer]

There is never a need to defrag a SSD.
Post a screenshot of what Crystaldiskinfo (free) shows, of the drive in question.

Also check event viewer for any errors/warnings, and post those.
Lastly, post a screenshot of AS-SSD (http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?download_id=9) No need to run any benchmarks. Just checking alignment.

 

[Kaoss]

There is never a need to defrag a SSD.
Post a screenshot of what Crystaldiskinfo (free) shows, of the drive in question.

Also check event viewer for any errors/warnings, and post those.
Lastly, post a screenshot of AS-SSD (http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?download_id=9) No need to run any benchmarks. Just checking alignment.

I defragged my HDD, not my SSD, I am aware defragging an SSD is very detrimental lol.

Event log is empty.

Crystaldiskinfo

SSD

HDD

AS-SSD

SSD (ran a benchmark just for fun)

HDD

 

[DominionSeraph]

Your BIOS isn't detecting it, and Windows seems to be hanging detecting it. I'd say it's the drive.
Does your BIOS allow you to manually configure the drive instead of auto-detecting every boot? That might get you around it.

 

[Binky]

Windows was installed on my Plextor M5S SSD without the HDD connected. I installed the HDD after Windows completed installation. The first few days of bootup were lightning quick, the "Starting Windows" animation couldn't even finish loading before Windows loaded. After I started putting files onto my HDD, mostly music and Blu-ray rips and games, bootup became extremely slow. The "Starting Windows" screen would hang (but still be pulsing) for about 50 seconds before loading Windows, and even after a full disk check + defrag I was still getting above 35 seconds on the animation screen.

Were there any driver installs after windows was installed (point A), but before the slowness started (point B)? Maybe the system restore points might help, as the automatically created restore points tell you why it was created (e.g. "install AMD driver blah blah").

My guess - you installed some driver between point A and point B that mucked things up.

 

[Kaoss]

Your BIOS isn't detecting it, and Windows seems to be hanging detecting it. I'd say it's the drive.
Does your BIOS allow you to manually configure the drive instead of auto-detecting every boot? That might get you around it.

Not that I'm aware of, unless MSI UEFI has some hidden option to manually configure the drive that I missed.

Were there any driver installs after windows was installed (point A), but before the slowness started (point B)? Maybe the system restore points might help, as the automatically created restore points tell you why it was created (e.g. "install AMD driver blah blah").

My guess - you installed some driver between point A and point B that mucked things up.

There were driver install of some kind afterwards, and at some point it did slow down the boot, but I'm not sure what it is. No idea which system restore point to use though, as I've installed tons of drivers since the slow down already lol.

And at some point the UEFI did stop detecting the HDD for some odd reason. Since I removed it from the boot order entirely, the UEFI stopped detecting it.

 

[KingFatty]

Luckily it seems like a 2-part approach could work:
1) ignore windows for now, and focus on getting the drive to be detected in BIOS. Who knows, maybe there was some auto-detect setting that happened in the BIOS that is messing up things? Maybe try resetting your entire BIOS and see if the drive is auto-detected after that?
2) get that utility for windows bootups, I forget the name, but it's a popular diagnostic tool that tells you the various information/timing of what goes on during windows boot up. So you can see the pauses/delays caused by which programs, which could be helpful here.

But I'm guessing that once you fix the issue with the BIOS detection, then I bet windows will be fine? You aren't booting off that drive, you are just allowing it to be auto-detected by your BIOS, and it's hanging...

 

[Elixer]

Why are you using MS's drivers, and not AMD's ?
I have been using AMD's, and have no issues at all.

Have you checked for any new BIOS updates for that board ? Looks like they just updated on 2/4/13.
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/970A-G46.html#?div=BIOS

 

[Kaoss]

Luckily it seems like a 2-part approach could work:
1) ignore windows for now, and focus on getting the drive to be detected in BIOS. Who knows, maybe there was some auto-detect setting that happened in the BIOS that is messing up things? Maybe try resetting your entire BIOS and see if the drive is auto-detected after that?
2) get that utility for windows bootups, I forget the name, but it's a popular diagnostic tool that tells you the various information/timing of what goes on during windows boot up. So you can see the pauses/delays caused by which programs, which could be helpful here.

But I'm guessing that once you fix the issue with the BIOS detection, then I bet windows will be fine? You aren't booting off that drive, you are just allowing it to be auto-detected by your BIOS, and it's hanging...

Will try resetting the BIOS first and report back.

Why are you using MS's drivers, and not AMD's ?
I have been using AMD's, and have no issues at all.

Have you checked for any new BIOS updates for that board ? Looks like they just updated on 2/4/13.
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/970A-G46.html#?div=BIOS

You mean AMD's drivers for the mobo or the HDD?

 

[Elixer]

You mean AMD's drivers for the mobo or the HDD?

Hmm ?
You need AMD chipset drivers, and AMD SATA drivers... They should be part of the whole package.
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/13-1_vista_win7_win8_32-64_sb.exe

 

[Kaoss]

Hmm ?
You need AMD chipset drivers, and AMD SATA drivers... They should be part of the whole package.
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/13-1_vista_win7_win8_32-64_sb.exe

My computer completely froze while I was installing the "SATA" package.

EDIT: Worked the second time, it was just the installer failing to install. Restarted but nothing different, still hanging.

Took a few images of my UEFI boot settings as the UEFI won't read my USB drive for F12 screen captures for some reason. HDD is still not being recognized by the UEFI.

However it shows up under HDD BBS priority

UPDATE: updated all my mobo-related drivers and still the same, no change.

 

[john3850]

My 1T-f3 hung before it died like that at last it frooze and stopped any pc from booting.
Lost two drives this year which is odd.

 

[Kaoss]

If all else fails, I guess I'll have to format my HDD and see if that fixes the problem.

 

[Elixer]

If all else fails, I guess I'll have to format my HDD and see if that fixes the problem.

Formatting the HD won't solve the BIOS detection issue... and I am unsure how it is supposed to look like on that screen. That shows boot drives, and IIRC, it will only display it there if the HD is 'active' or has a boot loader on it.
I think there is another screen that should show what SATA mode HD is using, and if SMART is enabled or not.

If you tried new cables, and you tried a different port, then I suppose the only thing left is report the issue to MSI, and see what their BIOS guys say, or the HD is flaky (which means either return it, or RMA it).

 

[Kaoss]

Won't be able to return it or RMA it. It's a refurbished unit and I didn't use until a year later after my purchase date lol.

I wonder if there's a BIOS hard reset that could revert everything back to default settings? I highly doubt it's the HDD's problem because it operates perfectly fine after boot, not a single hiccup at all.

Perhaps the HDD does not have a boot loader on it? There is another screen that shows "SATA MODE" but it is already AHCI.

UPDATE: The HDD is being recognized by the BIOS in the list of SATA devices connected, but it's not a boot option like it used to be when I first started using the HDD. Checked events log and these few errors in system came up an endless number of times. I don't know if this contributes to anything though.

(Source: disk)The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2.

(Source: service control manager) The AODDriver4.2 service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified.

(Source: service control manager) The Computer Browser service depends on the Server service which failed to start because of the following error:
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

(Source: HAL) The platform firmware has corrupted memory across the previous system power transition. Please check for updated firmware for your system.

 

[Kaoss]

Changed my SSD to the active partition in management, got the bootmgr missing and did a startup repair. In management the SSD now appears as active partition but the time it takes to bootup with the HDD connected hasn't changed.

 

[Using OpenBSD]

I would say the drive needs replacing, if you go for the formatting of the drive, use a low-level format utility from Western Digital.

 

[Kaoss]

Is it possible to mirror a 2.5TB drive (only using a couple hundred GB only) to a smaller disk, say 500GB, format the 2.5TB drive and restore the original files the way they were before the format?

EDIT: But before that, could my secondary HDD have its MBR/boot sector corrupted or missing?

UPDATE: connected HDD to an HDD dock and hooked up to PC via USB. Booted up into BIOS and the HDD was now listed as a boot option, but only as a floppy disk boot or UEFI boot. I chose the latter, bootup was very quick and once I reached Windows the drive showed up as it would have shown up if I had it connected via SATA. However, when I click "Local Disk D" it takes about 30 seconds for the drive to load and display its files.

 

[Elixer]

Is it possible to mirror a 2.5TB drive (only using a couple hundred GB only) to a smaller disk, say 500GB, format the 2.5TB drive and restore the original files the way they were before the format?

EDIT: But before that, could my secondary HDD have its MBR/boot sector corrupted or missing?

UPDATE: connected HDD to an HDD dock and hooked up to PC via USB. Booted up into BIOS and the HDD was now listed as a boot option, but only as a floppy disk boot or UEFI boot. I chose the latter, bootup was very quick and once I reached Windows the drive showed up as it would have shown up if I had it connected via SATA. However, when I click "Local Disk D" it takes about 30 seconds for the drive to load and display its files.

Yeah, you can do copy to a smaller drive no problem, since you don't have that much data yet.

And your sure, you don't have any warnings/errors in the event viewer ?

 

[Kaoss]

No warnings/errors that specifically pop out to me related to boot and/or disk errors.

 

[BFG10K]

I notice your system’s overclocked. I assume you’ve tried running it at stock?

 

[Kaoss]

So I moved my system back into my old CM Elite 430. HDD is still not functioning at bootup as its supposed to. However, it does begin spinning as soon as I hit the power button.

I notice your system’s overclocked. I assume you’ve tried running it at stock?

Yes, I have tried running it at stock.

UPDATE: Decided I had enough and purchased an an USB 3.0 HDD enclosure. Not going to waste anymore time trying to fix a nuisance like this. Works fine without any hiccups with the drive in an external enclosure!

 

[Kaoss]

Now that I have the disk in an enclosure hooked up via USB, it will power down in the middle of a game causing the game to freeze. It is worth it to note that the disk is a Caviar Green that does spin down more often, but definitely not during a game, and it didn't ever spin down during a game when it was connected via SATA. Would this be more of a USB power saving feature? If so, is there any way to disable it?

 

[Ketchup]

Now that I have the disk in an enclosure hooked up via USB, it will power down in the middle of a game causing the game to freeze. It is worth it to note that the disk is a Caviar Green that does spin down more often, but definitely not during a game, and it didn't ever spin down during a game when it was connected via SATA. Would this be more of a USB power saving feature? If so, is there any way to disable it?

Hopefully it's in the Windows Power settings, either USB "Selective Suspend" or the Hard Disk "Turn off hard disk after" options. I would set those to "Never" and see what happens.