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Splash screen/POST delayed by HDD

G

g_e_c_k_o

Junior Member
I wasn't sure where to post this, also skip to the third paragraph to see the actual problem (the first and second are background info)

I have a Crucial M4 128GB SSD as my OS drive and its working great. Then, for storage I have a 2TB WD Black HDD, that has nothing wrong with it according to all disk health programs I have run. I have another 3TB Seagate Barracuda in an external enclosure. My motherboard (ASRock Z77 Extreme 6) is also working fine.

However, whenever I boot with an internal HDD connected (I have tried both the WD and the Seagate and on different SATA ports) the POST is not instant like when only the SSD is connected. Having my optical drive connected makes no difference.

I have disabled the splash screen in the BIOS and I see that with only the SSD all the info comes up instantly, whereas with an HDD attached it takes up to ten seconds to POST (longer than Windows' loading time!)

All help is appreciated!
 
Is the Seagate in the external enclosure connected by USB or e-SATA? POST may be detecting it and attempting to boot off of it if it is USB. It may have to spin up to do that.
 
What version of the BIOS do you have ?
It shouldn't take that long to scan for devices, and there should be a setting in the BIOS that controls this.
 
Well, the Seagate HDD is never connected unless I need to backup my PC, I only mentioned it because I used it in troubleshooting the issue and ruling out the HDD as the cause. I have checked all the BIOS settings the ASrock mobo has no "fast post/boot" settings. I will check the BIOS version next time I reboot. In the meantime does anyone else have any more suggestions?

EDIT: Oh, and without the HDD connected the BIOS checks are near instantaneous as stated in the OP
 
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Maybe try setting the SATA port for the HDD to IDE mode, and keep the SATA port for the SSD to AHCI mode? I don't know if your mobo has that feature to assign different modes to different SATA ports, but maybe the slow-down is because the mobo is trying to apply AHCI to the HDD, so it takes extra time to initialize all the extra AHCI stuff for the HDD separately? I have no idea if this is true or if it would work, but maybe that has something to do with it, and IDE mode is just simplistic to help a faster boot?
 
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