Question How do i make my pc to not use my hard drive while booting?

[Windows 8.192]

I once found a encountered a problem when my pc suddenly started booting extremely slowly with my nvme ssd (slower than a hard drive) which was only 2-3 months old, it usually took 5 to 10 secs total to boot but now it takes more than 5 minutes. I didnt want to reset my pc so i tried many things i read from the internet like stopping startup apps but nothing worked. But just yesterday (a day ago after i wrote this thread), i opened my side panel and was looking at my m.2 ssd. i turned on the pc, then when the pc started booting into windows, the ssd's light was on (meaning it was doing something mostly booting the os) but after 4-10 secs it turned off, but the disk activity led that was on my case was still on. This meant that the hdd was doing something while booting. Then i opened disk management and made my drive offline, to see if that would fix it. And after a restart, instead of taking minutes to turn on, it just turned on like before in 6 seconds! But then i made my hard drive online and again it became slow. So can anyone find a way to like see what the hard drive was doing or to not let windows use the hard drive while booting with out having to offline it?

 

[helpstar]

check if the M.2 is set to first boot device in BIOS
check the sata cable (power and data) of the HDD, if well connected.
eventually replace the SATA data cable / use a different SATA port on the motherboard
check the hard drive for errors with its manufacturer´s tool


check windows integrity
open the command prompt as administrator and type DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open-an-elevated-command-prompt-2618088
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...em-files/bc609315-da1f-4775-812c-695b60477a93

clean boot
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

check the memory by running memtest.org usb autoinstaller (bootable USB flash drive)

 

[Windows 8.192]

[REPLY="helpstar, post: 22113325, member: 1019311"]
check if the M.2 is set to first boot device in BIOS
check the sata cable (power and data) of the HDD, if well connected.
eventually replace the SATA data cable / use a different SATA port on the motherboard
check the hard drive for errors with its manufacturer´s tool


check windows integrity
open the command prompt as administrator and type DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open-an-elevated-command-prompt-2618088
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...em-files/bc609315-da1f-4775-812c-695b60477a93

clean boot
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

check the memory by running memtest.org usb autoinstaller (bootable USB flash drive)
[REPLY]
i have tried everything but still didnt work

 

[Colif]

can you show us a screen shot of disk management?
can you show us a picture of the boot order in bios? does it mention windows boot manager anywhere?

upload them to an image sharing website and show link

 

[SkyNetRising]

So can anyone find a way to like see what the hard drive was doing or to not let windows use the hard drive while booting with out having to offline it?

Check health of your HDD.
Use HDtune health, post screenshot.
(upload image to imgur.com and post link)

 

[geofelt]

What might have changed since all was well?
Possibly you have contracted malware or a virus that is scanning your drive.

Look in the bios to see if there are options to test ram or HDD integrity.
You do not need them which can be lengthy.

Enable fast boot.
Instead of loading individual windows component, fast boot will read a simple file containing an image of windows.

Turn off hibernate in power options.
Keep it only if you need to preserve ram contents in the sleep state.

I would normally use sleep to ram/no hibernate.
That puts the pc and monitor into a very low power satate similar to full power off.
Sleep/wake should only be a handful of seconds.

Only after a windows update should you need a full boot.

 

[Windows 8.192]

[REPLY="Colif, post: 22113685, member: 1839848"]
can you show us a screen shot of disk management?
can you show us a picture of the boot order in bios? does it mention windows boot manager anywhere?

upload them to an image sharing website and show link
[REPLY]
heres the picture from disk management: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JFKoAvPzRgHngekH-mWQeKSuGbP2dVFl/view?usp=sharing
i wasnt able to take pics of the bios, so the boot order is the original one (meaning i never touched them)
UEFI WINDOWS BOOT MANAGER (HP SSD EX900)>WINDOWS BOOT MANAGER (HP SSD EX900)>HDD (SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200 RPM)>UEFI CD/DVD>CD/DVD>UEFI USB KEY>USB KEY>FLOPPY>LAN

 

[Windows 8.192]

[REPLY="SkyNetRising, post: 22113693, member: 1990548"]
Check health of your HDD.
Use HDtune health, post screenshot.
(upload image to imgur.com and post link)
[REPLY]
For some reason, when i try to open hdtune, it doesnt come up on my screen even tho task manager says the process is running, i tried running as admin, turning off windows defender (sometimes does this) but still didnt work and i did download from hdtune.com

 

[Windows 8.192]

[REPLY="geofelt, post: 22113767, member: 107382"]
What might have changed since all was well?
Possibly you have contracted malware or a virus that is scanning your drive.

Look in the bios to see if there are options to test ram or HDD integrity.
You do not need them which can be lengthy.

Enable fast boot.
Instead of loading individual windows component, fast boot will read a simple file containing an image of windows.

Turn off hibernate in power options.
Keep it only if you need to preserve ram contents in the sleep state.

I would normally use sleep to ram/no hibernate.
That puts the pc and monitor into a very low power satate similar to full power off.
Sleep/wake should only be a handful of seconds.

Only after a windows update should you need a full boot.
[REPLY]
I dont think i have malware, since i dont usually download things from unknown sources, and also i have deleted most unused/ unecessary apps from my pc.
I couldnt find any options to test ram or hdd integrity in my motherboard's (MSI B450M A-PRO MAX) BIOS (MSI CLICK BIOS 5)
I have never seen hibernation option nor was it enabled, and also i dont think hibernation could affect this because usually the hiberfil.sys is stored on the ssd and not the hard drive. some might say the page file might be the problem if it is also in the hdd but i check there wasnt.
Once my sleep was because hybrid sleep was on, i turned it off, some if any way it could affect it.

 

[Colif]

UEFI WINDOWS BOOT MANAGER (HP SSD EX900)>WINDOWS BOOT MANAGER (HP SSD EX900)>HDD (SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200 RPM)>UEFI CD/DVD>CD/DVD>UEFI USB KEY>USB KEY>FLOPPY>LAN

so i assume disk 2 is the ssd, 250gb

you probably don't want HDD (SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200 RPM) in the boot order but as its 3rd in line, it could be the health of driver slowing boot down, and not fact its in boot order. As it should be booting off the ssd
try running the tests in this software on hdd - https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/seatools/seatools-win-master/

 

[Windows 8.192]

I think that some of my program wants to access the hdd so that might be the problem

 

[Colif]

I think that some of my program wants to access the hdd so that might be the problem

that shouldn't slow down boot. There are no partitions on the hdd that include boot details so removing it from boot order wouldn't break any other programs. All of the programs on hdd can't start until you are in windows.