External eSATA HDD culprit for long boot times (?)

gil · 05 Oct 2015

Hi all,

I'm desperately trying to improve my boot times given I'm using SSD and when I used Win8.1 I used to have 8 seconds boot time.

This is a clean Win10 installation and all drivers are up to date.
I'm using an external eSATA HDD for backups. It seems that Windows is searching or accessing this HDD quite extensively during boot, just before the lock screen.
By default the boot time is 43 seconds (either restart or cold boot when fastboot is on or off)
When disconnecting the external HDD, the boot time is about 20 seconds.. which is far more acceptable.

I know there's a hidden partition of 128MB that windows created on that drive but I don't know why and I can't see this partition on Disk Management tool.

My question is, can anyone help me solve this issue? maybe guide on using a tool to see what's going on with the partitions of the external HDD and possibly delete this 128MB partition in hope to improve boot times.

Thanks!

ThePringler · 05 Oct 2015

I don't really have a ton to add to help you out but I will be watching this thread to see if there is a solution. I had a similar problem. I have an SSD in my desktop and my computer used to take over a minute to boot. Two of my HDD were failing. I disconnected them and now I boot in 10 seconds. I spent many hours scouring the web looking for a solution... could not find one.

In POST, I believe your BIOS is doing a disk check.

orlbuckeye · 06 Oct 2015

gil said:

Hi all,

I'm desperately trying to improve my boot times given I'm using SSD and when I used Win8.1 I used to have 8 seconds boot time.

This is a clean Win10 installation and all drivers are up to date.
I'm using an external eSATA HDD for backups. It seems that Windows is searching or accessing this HDD quite extensively during boot, just before the lock screen.
By default the boot time is 43 seconds (either restart or cold boot when fastboot is on or off)
When disconnecting the external HDD, the boot time is about 20 seconds.. which is far more acceptable.

I know there's a hidden partition of 128MB that windows created on that drive but I don't know why and I can't see this partition on Disk Management tool.

My question is, can anyone help me solve this issue? maybe guide on using a tool to see what's going on with the partitions of the external HDD and possibly delete this 128MB partition in hope to improve boot times.

Thanks!

Wel, the easiest solution is to unplug the external drive while booting then plug it in after the machine has booted.

gil · 06 Oct 2015

ThePringler said:

I don't really have a ton to add to help you out but I will be watching this thread to see if there is a solution. I had a similar problem. I have an SSD in my desktop and my computer used to take over a minute to boot. Two of my HDD were failing. I disconnected them and now I boot in 10 seconds. I spent many hours scouring the web looking for a solution... could not find one.
In POST, I believe your BIOS is doing a disk check.

This is how my BIOS is set up to minimize boot seek times. Do you think it's correct?

External eSATA HDD culprit for long boot times (?)-151006220524.jpg

External eSATA HDD culprit for long boot times (?)-151006220507.jpg

External eSATA HDD culprit for long boot times (?)-151006220611.jpg

External eSATA HDD culprit for long boot times (?)-151006220730.jpg

bjorn1 · 05 Dec 2015

This is exactly the same problem I'm experiencing
with e-sata drives and Win 10- First boot with the black screen (what do you call it, anyway?) is without problems, but when Windows start booting, it takes at least 15 minutes to come up! When I shut down the esata drive, Windows immediately will boot. I tried this procedure with two different hdd's with multiple connection options (Toshiba and LaCie) so I'd guess this isn't brand related. Also, I can see the drive(s) in Device Manager but not in This PC nor in Disk Manager. I'm on a rather aged mobo, but I had things working fine in Win 7 - well not quite, but after fiddling around I succeeded ;-) Also, there seems to be a conflict with USB, which sometimes will not load when I try different options during boot up.