Very slow boot times after adding hard disc to system with SSD boot dr

[Tanquen]

I’m running a Samsung SSD and it starts up Windows 7 pretty fast. Once the Windows logo comes up it takes maybe 5 or 10 seconds to display the login prompt. Then it jumped to 2-3 minutes. It took me awhile to figure out what happened but after trying many different things I found that it was the large data only drive that I had added shortly after the new Windows 7 install. If I unplug it I’m back to 5 or 10 seconds till the login.

What is the point of getting an SSD if you can’t add a large data drive? Any ideas?

It’s a new build with:
ASRock X79 Extreme 9 motherboard
Samsung 512MB 830 SSD
Seagate 4TB Hard Disk

The SSD and the larger disk drive are both on the only 2 Intel SATA3 ports. If I move it to any other port its a little slower. Indexing is not enabled for the drive. I have no virus scanning software at the moment. I tried disabling the other 2 SATA controllers.

 

[meeveret]

Thanks to everyone in this post especially Tanquen, after searching for a few hours over the course of a few days I finally found this thread with Tanquen's problem which matched mine perfectly!

For those just looking for a solution I simply did the following:

Windows 7 Professional:
Start > Right Click Computer > Properties
Click System Protection
Click your huge data drive (D drive in my case)
Click configured
Click the Delete button to remove all useless restore points
Click Turn off system protection to permanently disable them.
Click OK and check your boot times!

So my solution isn't exactly like his but I looked to see if Volume Shadow Copy was on and it was not. It wasn't causing the problems but all the talk about backups here made me think about System Restore and try it.

My deal:

Building a new PC for a client. They of course wanted a 4TB hard drive to store security footage from 7 camera's I installed in their house a few weeks back.

Hardware:
ASRock AM1B-ITX Motherboard
AMD Athlon 5350 APU
8GB Kingston DDR3 1600 CL9 240 Pin UDIMM (KHX16C9B1RK2/8X)
ASUS SATA DVD ROM
Logisys case with 480W Power Supply
Kingston 120GB ssdNow 300V (SV300S37A/120G)
Seagate ST4000DX001 4TB+8GB NAND Flash 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"

Kingston Sata drive on the AMD sata controller (I think its AMD) and Seagate & ASUS drives on the ASRock sata controller.

-First installed Windows 7 on the Seagate drive (with no SSD) and everything seemed fine, except the drive was just 2TB.
-Learned about GPT and UEFI and all that crazyness that reminded me of my first >2GB hard drive install, back in the day.
-Amazingly I got UEFI enabled and windows 7 automatically created the GPT partition and I had a bootable 4TB drive (well 3.71 TB or something)
-However after loading drivers I noticed the boot times were terrible.
-Timed it at over 2 full minutes.
-I had purchased a 4TB Hybrid drive specifically because Seagate advertised fast boot times.
-Tried searching the web for a solution but came up empty, well after an hour of research gave up.
-Next I told my client I assumed it was the 4TB limit and this new fancy GPT partition/UEFI boot process. Said we needed a 120GB SATA drive so we could get the 20 second boot times I promised him
-He went for it and I added the 120GB SATA Drive as specified above
-Reinstalled Windows 7 Pro and loaded the chipset drivers
-To my complete amazement I had a LONGER boot time almost 3 minutes!
-So I rolled up my sleeves and started searching for Slow boot times as a result of adding a 4TB drive and found this forum.
-The rest is in my solution above.

Sorry for the long post but all the follow up questions above lead me to my solution and I hope I can help someone else out there too!

 

[mgoetter]

Old thread but I had the same problem with a data drive (1TB), tried everything in this thread then I referred to my MOBO book for SATA port numbering.

SATA ports were labeled 1-6 I had the data data drive plugged into 2 and my SSD plugged into 4. I changed my SSD to plug #1 and my data HDD to plug 4 and my boot times changed back to normal.

Also I set my data drive to drive Z, it was previously drive A. I don't think this is what solved it but I am adding it just in case.

 

[kaswyn]

Hi guys,

I know this is an old post, but it is super helpful. I had the same thing with my 3TB Toshiba (Hitachi) drive on my i5-3570K system. Originally I had installed Windows 7 while both drives were plugged in. This resulted in Windows throwing some boot files on the HHD even though I did not pick it as the install drive. Consequently, once I removed my old HHD drive, Windows 7 no longer booted. I ended up reinstalling Windows 7 on my SSD without my HHD plugged in. I noticed my HHD now had some goofy partition reserved, so I used diskpart to wipe out that system reserved partition due to not being able to do that from Disk Management. I am unsure if I noticed the slowness before or after I reinstalled Windows. However, My Samsung 256GB SSD boots up in like 8 seconds. When I inserted my 3TB drive, it would slow the Windows boot to about 40 seconds.

I had turned on System Protection for my HHD, due to the threat of ransomware trojans that encrypt your files and forces you to pay them, with or without success. Shadow Copy can save you by making a copy as the trojan encrypts your file, thus allowing you to restore a previous copy. I wanted to keep my cake and eat it too. After all, I have the same make/model drive in an i7-2600K system and it works flawlessly with the setting, and about almost 2TB full. Anyways, how I resolved my slowness was this:

1. Right-click Computer > Properties > System protection.
2. Highlight HHD and click Configure. Click Delete. This didn't help.
3. My setting is set to 35% so I lowered it to 10%. That didn't help.
4. I turned off system protection for my HHD. This helped. Boot times now drop to 8 seconds.
5. I turned system protection back on for my HHD, at 35%. I can still boot in about 8 seconds. WOOOOOOHOOOO!

Moral of the story is you may not need to reformat your drive. I had a few downloaded apps and drivers on it and chose not to reformat.

Thanks for all ya'll tips!

 

[RealBeast]

With both drives attached to Intel controller, SSD to the 6Gbps and HDD to a 3Gbps open the bios and insure that the HDD is not in the boot order and if you can't eliminate it then make sure it is below the SSD. It sounds like the system is looking at the HDD first to boot and then to the SSD.

Also disable the splash screen and leave the Marvell controller off, both will save time.

Once you solve this problem, look over this to optimize your SSD (nice one by the way!): http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

 

[inzone]

When you installed the SSD did you enable AHCI? Your motherboard has 8 sata3 ports and two of them are the Intel controller and the other 6 are on the Marvell controller. Why can't you put the SSD on the Intel controller and the large HDD on the Marvell controller? It seems like the large HDD is not going to be fast at anything and will not ever saturate any port on the motherboard. Any programs that you want to be fast should be on the SSD anyway. You can also put the page file onto the HDD and that will help the SSD with available space.

 

[thessdreview]

The problem is not with your SSD or the motherboards, although, I am wondering if the size of that drive is causing complications with limits of the motherboard. Have you tried same with a smaller data drive below 2TB?

 

[Tanquen]

Realbeast-

Right now I have both the SSD and the HDD on the SATA3/6GB ports. They are the only SATA3 compliant drives so I figured, why not. I do also have a Blu-Ray drive on one of the 4 Intel SATA2 ports. I had found some info online about the boot order and such. The boot order was fine but when I disabled the two third party Marvell controllers I also disabled the HDD entries. This did not help.

With nothing plugged into them, the Marvell controllers don’t change the boot time. Disable the splash screen? The Windows splash screen? I think I did that with Win95 once but the drives are so fast now I don’t think the splash screen is adding much. With the SSD only it’s at the Windows splash screen in just a few seconds and at the login screen in just a few more.

Inzone-

Yes AHCI, as in not IDE or RAID. I also let the Windows 7 install do the setup/formatting. I don’t think the SSD is the problem though. As I said above, I did try the other ports but it was just slower. I had always read that the built in Intel controller was always faster so I was just using them first. The plan was to add other backup only drives to the Marvell ports later.

One of the first things I did after adding the HDD was move the page file to it and disable Windows hibernate. With this much RAM I don’t think I need a page file and I’m not wanting to give up 64GB of my SSD. The hibernate file was taking another 40GB or so. In fact, I thought that may be the cause of the slow down but even with the page file completely disabled I can toggle the long boot time by connecting or disconnecting the HDD.

 

[Tanquen]

Thessdreview-

I had the same thought last night. I do have some other drives I can try but this is the one for the new setup. I will try the other drives later, just to see. I just wonder what it’s doing. There is a lot of drive activity but I can see why. Even if it’s just reading everything on the drive there is not much to read at this point. I was thinking maybe ASRock set something incorrectly and that is also why I was on the Intel ports.

I was going to format the HDD as two 2TB partitions to possibly avoid drive utility issues.

 

[RealBeast]

No, not the windows splash screen, the ASRock, which it sounds like is already off.

Did you install Intel RST drivers? You might try disabling them.

And one other idea -- check the alignment of your drives by typing in the command prompt window when both drives are attached:

cd c:\windows\system32
wmic partition get BlockSize, StartingOffset, Name, Index

that will give you exact alignment information (unlike the rounded diskpart info), divide each by 4096 and you should get no remainder.

 

[Tanquen]

Oh, ok. That is what I thought but the BIOS splash screen is like nothing. It zips by in a second and its doing its thing before Windows even starts to load. The trouble I’m having is after windows is almost done loading.

I did have the Intel and Marvell drivers loaded but I even did a full reinstall before I found that the HDD being connected was the cause. With or with out drivers it acts the same.

I did check the SSD alignment at one point but I thought only SSD drives had alignment performance issues. I’ll check when I get home.

Thnaks.

 

[Tanquen]

I guess the alignment is ok as all are divisible by 4096.

c:\Windows\System32>wmic partition get BlockSize, StartingOffset, Name, Index
BlockSize Index Name StartingOffset
512 0 Disk #0, Partition #0 1048576
512 1 Disk #0, Partition #1 105906176
512 0 Disk #1, Partition #0 135266304

 

[Tanquen]

I connected an older 2TB drive and it worked fine with no Boot Time slowdown. So maybe its the GPT format, the fact that it’s a 4TB or the drive it’s self. New firmware maybe? I’m moving what I had off it now to see what happens when it’s RAW with no format and with a 2TB MBR partition.
Can I safely have a 4TB drive with 2 2TB MBR partitions? I’d rather not have the extra drive letter but the extended boot time is lame. Though, everything seems fine after that so I’m not sure which way to go. I’m also wondering (if that is the deal) why is the new motherboard and or Intel controller and or Windows is lame when adding a GPT partitioned drive. Why are there no real standards, just guinea pigs.

 

[RealBeast]

I would run SeaTools on it from: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=3.4.0.1.1&vgnextoid=3b17fbbad0f89210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD

It doesn't look like there is any new firmware -- Seagate doesn't even have it on their site. Did you buy an internal or an external and remove the drive?

 

[Tanquen]

I too had checked the Seagate site and found nothing but when I got the drive I put in the serial number too check the warranty and the info came up fine. The drive was new OEM in an unopened static packet. It looks like a first run got out and a few places were selling them now the place I got it from is out and other places are asking closer to $500.

The first thing I did before putting anything on it was run SeaTools. Normally I just use HDTune but it could not see the entire drive.

I’ve been finding out some interesting stuff doing a little testing. As I said before the 2TB drive was fine (not sure of the total boot time but it was very short) so I put the 4TB back in and the larger delay was back. I was going to try a 2TB MBR partition but for some reason I thought I’d try the drive raw with no table of any kind and then the GPT table again.

So with no second drive my full reboot time from desktop to desktop is 39 seconds. With my external eSATA drive 39 seconds. With the 4TB drive as is 2+ minutes. So…

My Tests:

SSD only:____________________________________39 Sec.
The above + External eSATA:_____________________40 Sec.
The above + RAW 4TB drive:_____________________40 Sec.
The above + GPT table on 4TB drive:_______________40 Sec.
The above + w/ 200MB of data on the 4TB drive:_____40 Sec.
The above + 64GB Swap File on the 4TB drive:_______40 Sec.
The above + 16GB of data on the 4TB drive:_________40 Sec.
The above + 189GB of data on the 4TB drive:________40-45 Sec.

Note: The boot time returns to 40 Sec after some reboots but it seems more random.

The above + An 8GB Win7 backup on External eSATA:_45-50 Sec.
The above + An 8GB Win7 backup on the 4TB drive:___140 Sec. or 2 minutes and 19 seconds. ?

I had run that same backup to the 4TB before without thinking much of it and then later noticed the longer boot times. I wonder what it’s doing. There seems to be a smaller slowdown after making a back to the eSATA drive but nothing like the 4TB drive. I really don’t want to take the older 2TB out of it’s PC and try a back up but I’m thinking of trying the above tests again with a 2TB MBR partition.

Though the 4TB GPT partition seems ok until I run the windows system backup to it. What’s even more cool is that after removing the WindowsImageBackup folder off the 4TB drive it still has the longer 2+ minute boot time. ????????

 

[RealBeast]

Interesting results. Nice being on the bleeding edge, huh?

It sounds like there will be a firmware update once the drive is more widely sold, your other equipment is most probably not the issue being the newest stuff out there it should be fine with GPT initialized drives.

Does it seem to matter if you have the 4Tb on SATA2_0 to SATA2_3, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 as opposed to SATA3_M0 to SATA3_M5 (Marvell) ports with the Marvell bootable option disabled and Marvell's AHCI enabled?

 

[Tanquen]

It seems kind of like a Windows thing too. When the System Image is running in Windows I saw something about Volume Shadow Copy setup. I think it’s setting that up on the drive and that is causing the extra boot lag. Though it doesn’t seem to affect the eSATA drive when I put a backup on it. It would seem that is why the extra long boot time is there until the drive is reformatted. Even if I delete everything its still slow after I’ve run a backup image to it.

I tried a 2TB GPT and MBR partition and the extra long boot time is still there but at about a minute twenty vs. two twenty.

One of the first things I did was put the drive on a few of the Marvell ports but not on any of the SATA2 ports. It seemed even slower on Marvell SATA3 ports. I may give that a shot but I think I’d cry if it ran fine on one of the SATA2 ports.

 

[RealBeast]

I may give that a shot but I think I’d cry if it ran fine on one of the SATA2 ports.

Since it is a HDD, it would not saturate even a SATA II port bandwidth, but you never know where the bug is now, so it could work?

 

[Tanquen]

Since it is a HDD, it would not saturate even a SATA II port bandwidth, but you never know where the bug is now, so it could work?

I just tried it but it still has the same boot lag. For now I'm just not going to put any Windows backups on it and use the eSATA drive for that.

 

[RealBeast]

You've convinced me that it's a bug in the firmware that will get fixed once the drive is widely released and people start complaining in large numbers.

 

[Tanquen]

I hope someone will fix it but I’m thinking it’s the way MS handles the volume shadow copies on drives using GPT partition tables. It’s only after I make a Window system image to the 3.6TB GPT drive and the lag still happens even after removing everything from that drive. I don’t know how many people will bump into this and even notice that it’s happened.

 

[profuturus]

I’m running a Samsung SSD and it starts up Windows 7 pretty fast. Once the Windows logo comes up it takes maybe 5 or 10 seconds to display the login prompt. Then it jumped to 2-3 minutes. It took me awhile to figure out what happened but after trying many different things I found that it was the large data only drive that I had added shortly after the new Windows 7 install. If I unplug it I’m back to 5 or 10 seconds till the login.

What is the point of getting an SSD if you can’t add a large data drive? Any ideas?

It’s a new build with:
ASRock X79 Extreme 9 motherboard
Samsung 512MB 830 SSD
Seagate 4TB Hard Disk

The SSD and the larger disk drive are both on the only 2 Intel SATA3 ports. If I move it to any other port its a little slower. Indexing is not enabled for the drive. I have no virus scanning software at the moment. I tried disabling the other 2 SATA controllers.

Having same problem with new OCZ Agility 3 at normal boot BUT, if i first enter with F8 to the safe start windows and go to "Start Normally", Windows 7 boots in 30 secs (versus 1' 30'' actual boot with ssd drive)
I hope somebody can understand what is going on and propose a solution.

 

[Tanquen]

Not sure if you are having the same problem I did. I fixed mine. Read the post above.

 

[profuturus]

Not sure if you are having the same problem I did. I fixed mine. Read the post above.

I don't, Tanquen. i have slow boots with or w/o standard data drive( D), with fresh reinstall and windows partitioning, with reboot(not a cold boot)...
The only instance of a 30 sec boot is starting Windows in the "F8" screen.
What could that mean?

 

[Tanquen]

Try Googling: “Windows 7 boot time optimization” In one of the Windows logs you can see how long Windows spends on each action during startup and shutdown. There may be an answer there as that information is specifically to help troubleshoot long startups or shutdowns. It did not help me but you may be able to look at the log with and without using the F8 boot option and see what is different.

http://itexpertvoice.com/home/what%E2%80%99s-taking-so-long-how-to-fight-slow-startup-times-in-windows-7/