[Windows 8.1] SSD Boot time 14 Seconds longer after adding HDD

[Quad5Ny]

TLDR: Is there anyway to make SSD+HDD setup boot as quick as a SSD only one?

---

So I have a new Asus Z87-Pro build I put together w/Windows 8.1 plus a Samsung 830 Pro. After getting everything setup with pure UEFI, GOP video, and all legacy options disabled Cold Boot times were fantastic, only 9.5 seconds from pressing power (and this is without Windows Fast Startup enabled!).

Skip ahead a month and I've added a WD Black (FZEX) and my boot times have gained 13.5 seconds (23 seconds Cold Boot).

I know the drive has to spin up and Windows has to read the GPT & File System('s) but surely it can't take a extra 14 seconds to do that?

P.S. The drive seems in good shape; I did a full Write/Read pass on it last night and the drives S.M.A.R.T data shows zero problems. I'd also like to note that warm boots are unaffected.
---
EDIT: Did a power cycle and the Spin-Up Time SMART attribute finally populated. Apparently WD Blacks take 12 seconds to spin up (11816ms)

 

[radtechtips]

I have the same "problem".

Is there any way to make windows wait to mount the HDD until it is fully booted?

 

[corkyg]

Easy way is to make the HDD external and not turn it on unless needed. Or, mount it in a mobile rack with a on/off switch. BTW, in that 14 seconds, your AV system is doing its thing as well.

 

[radtechtips]

Easy way is to make the HDD external and not turn it on unless needed. Or, mount it in a mobile rack with a on/off switch. BTW, in that 14 seconds, your AV system is doing its thing as well.

Just remembered I have a hot swap bay. That would probably work.

 

[Quad5Ny]

Easy way is to make the HDD external and not turn it on unless needed. Or, mount it in a mobile rack with a on/off switch. BTW, in that 14 seconds, your AV system is doing its thing as well.

I need the drive as a scratch disk, sticking it in a external enclosure would degrade its performance. I do have 2 hot swap bays (1 2x2.5" and 1 3.5") but its easier to wait the 14 seconds than hot swap the disk every cold boot.

I don't run a active Antivirus or backup program. Even if that was the case, the drive is unpartitioned (not counting a EFI and MSR partition).

I'm still really surprised a current generation desktop drive takes 12 seconds to spin up. I have a old 2.5" Scorpio Blue who's Spin-up time says its only 983ms (less than a second). :hmm: Maybe I have a bad drive?

 

[el-Capitan]

I have a an 840 and a Black and it definitely does not need anywhere close to 12secs to spin up and load the OS. Have you had a closer look at your BIOS startup options?

 

[Quad5Ny]

I have a an 840 and a Black and it definitely does not need anywhere close to 12secs to spin up and load the OS. Have you had a closer look at your BIOS startup options?

The BIOS hands off to Windows in 3.5sec for SSD only and 4.8sec with SSD+HDD according to the Task Manager startup tab and I'm inclined to agree on that after stop-watching it myself. 80% of the boot is spent at the Windows "spinning balls".

I've also loaded all SATA ports with SSDs and have no slow down in the boot sequence (830 Pro, 840 Pro, M4, 2x Vertex 2's, and a LG Blu-Ray Burner). It is only the Black that effects Windows loading.

Anyway I currently have the UEFI set to detect only the boot drive, let me mess with some of the UEFI settings and I'll post back.

 

[bbhaag]

Could it be the SATA port you are using? Don't the native SATA ports always run faster and the mb chip SATA ports take a little longer to load?

Not sure if that's the right terminology just throwing out ideas for you to look at.

 

[Quad5Ny]

There was a BIOS update for the Z87-Pro to v1707. The updates only change was "Increased Stability". So I figured what the hell, maybe they increased SATA compatibility… or something.

Dumb me does a flash without writing down any of my settings and after the F*cking update I completely lost my overclock profile and every tweaked setting.

I've just spent the last 3 1/2 hours remembering my OC and stress testing. Ugh what a headache. I'll post back tomorrow after messing around with the Startup tab in the UEFI.

 

[worric]

I have the same problem with my WD Black 2TB (FASS), only the spin-up time is just over 14seconds. I, too, can't understand how a contemporary disk can be so slow to start. It does take the fun out of the whole thing when you've invested a lot of money on the good stuff to be sure you've got a nice and snappy system just to find out about this little issue.

Any ideas or solutions so far?

 

[ViRGE]

I have the same problem with my WD Black 2TB (FASS), only the spin-up time is just over 14seconds. I, too, can't understand how a contemporary disk can be so slow to start. It does take the fun out of the whole thing when you've invested a lot of money on the good stuff to be sure you've got a nice and snappy system just to find out about this little issue.

Any ideas or solutions so far?

Is the question in relation to boot-up times, or the physical time needed to spin up the disk? If it's the latter, you'd probably be better off asking in our Memory and Storage forum.

 

[worric]

Is the question in relation to boot-up times, or the physical time needed to spin up the disk? If it's the latter, you'd probably be better off asking in our Memory and Storage forum.

It is indeed related to the spin-up time of the physical harddisk, also described by the SMART attribute of the same name.

And cheers, I'll try asking in the other forum. I simply stumbled upon this thread in a google search.

 

[Quad5Ny]

Little bit of a update; Windows takes 15 seconds to resume from S3 sleep with the Black D:, the lock screen is frozen until the drive fully spins up. For comparison I grabbed a old 1TB WD RE4 and its Spinup time was only 4 seconds, there has to be something wrong with this (2TB WD Black) drive.

I also emailed WD Support asking for the Spinup time specs for this drive... their answer run a extended test with their diagnostic tools. I wanted the Spinup Time spec not to spend 10 hours running a "diagnostic" on every sector of the drive, which I've already told them I did by running a write-read pass over the entire disk. *facepalm*

 

[JoeBleed]

I bet it gets better, when you brake down and run the test, it will pass and then they'll do nothing for you. I bet that's what will happen though.

 

[Quad5Ny]

This is directly from Western Digital: "The attribute for Average drive ready time is 21 seconds for this model."

I guess WD thinks their customers don't care about waiting 21 seconds to resume from standby or when the drive wakes up from a low power state? ...But wait, thats not even possible because Windows will freeze with a stop bugcheck (BSOD) if you have your OS on a drive that takes longer than 10 seconds to spin up.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178 - "When you resume a computer from sleep or from hibernation, the SATA hard disk drivers require the SATA hard disks to be ready within 10 seconds. However, a large SATA hard disk may take longer than 10 seconds to be ready. In this situation, the resume operation times out."

So basically WD is saying their drives are not meant to install a operating system on.

 

[jkauff]

A couple of things you might check:

1. Make sure Windows did not install some of its boot files on the HDD. If you have both an SSD and a HDD connected when you install, it will do that. Installing with only the SSD connected is the best way to go, or if you don't want to re-install, delete the hidden boot partition on the HDD, power down and disconnect everything but the SSD, then do a boot repair.

2. Make sure you really have all the Fast Start options disabled (some are buried, IIRC), or if enabled make sure Windows is writing only to the SSD when you shut down.

 

[Quad5Ny]

Windows 8.1's bootmgr and BCD store are on my SSD's EFI partition, and Fast Startup is disabled.

The drive is the problem, no amount of tweaking can fix it. It has to spin up to 7200RPM in order to be accessed.

Apparently the Black series vary way more (spinup time included) than the enterprise RE series which need to be pretty uniform in order not to be dropped from RAID arrays and also to enable quick hot swapping in servers.

The only reason I purchased the Black is because they are currently faster than the RE4's. I'm still debating if the extra 30MB/s was worth it.

 

[jkauff]

I have a very similar setup, with an Asus Z77 Pro, a Samsung 840 Pro, and two WD Black drives running Win 8.1. Cold boot was slow when I had a PCIe SATA board installed, but that's gone now and startup is very quick. However, I also have a bunch of USB 3.0 external drives, and if they're turned on the BIOS takes forever to recognize them. Now I have them on a master power switch, and keep them turned off until after boot.

Do you have anything else in your system that might be causing your BIOS and/or Windows to start up more slowly? How about Windows services that are loading before the desktop?

I assume that since you only have one HDD, it's connected to an Intel SATA port on the MB and not one of the Asmedia ports. That can also slow things down a bit when the BIOS comes up.

 

[sm625]

Do not play with hot plugging just to save 13 seconds once a day. Just no...

Not all of that added time is from windows. The bios/uefi will also take a good deal of time waiting for the drive to power up so it can read it. You might be able to lower this time if you comb through the uefi.

 

[jkauff]

Do not play with hot plugging just to save 13 seconds once a day. Just no...

Not all of that added time is from windows. The bios/uefi will also take a good deal of time waiting for the drive to power up so it can read it. You might be able to lower this time if you comb through the uefi.

Good point about the BIOS. Make sure Asus Fast Boot is enabled, and if you have fast fingers you can cut down the length of time the BIOS info or logo is displayed. I have mine at 5 seconds, I think default is 20.

 

[code65536]

So basically WD is saying their drives are not meant to install a operating system on.

Well, that was fixed in W7 SP1 and only affected the default AHCI driver (i.e., if you used a third-party driver like Intel's, there wouldn't be a problem).

Anyway, even though my drive's spinup time isn't nearly as bad, I've never noticed a substantial wait-for-spinup delay when resuming (as in, I'm pretty sure I resume from sleep faster than it takes to fully spin up my data drive). I wonder if this has anything to do with the storage driver. I use the default msahci driver. Is that what you're using, or are you using iastor?

Also, is hybrid sleep turned on (I always disable it because I have UPS backup). That probably shouldn't make a difference since that uses the boot drive, but it's something to check.

 

[Quad5Ny]

I gave up, purchased 2 500GB 840 EVO's and put them in RAID0. Everything is back to what I would consider "Normal". As for the extra 2TB Black, that is now hooked up to a AsRock Z87E-ITX.

This is what resuming from S3 Sleep looks like with the WD Black in the AsRock rig; it mirrors the experience I had with the ASUS Z87-Pro.