Booting is extremly slow when connected to mutiple external hard drives

[zeroarst]

My motherboard is ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi AM4 ATX Motherboard

I have 11 external HDDs connected to my PC, and it takes me about 5 minutes to boot to the Windows. That is insane.

However, booting is fast without those external HDDs attached.

I searched on the internet, apparently many people have the problem. I have tried different solutions but none of them works for me:
1. Disable USB boot priorities



2. Turn on Fast Boot.


3. Set HDD emulation to Hard Drive for all HDDs.


Please help....it is impossible to unplug all HDDs when booting up PC, and re-plug all of them back...it is insane.
There must be a way to boot without having to wait for those HDDs.

[DarvinAtkeson]

I am having the same problem on the ASUS ROG Maximus XIII HERO .

I have a number of external hard drives for backing up my photography which includes some very large PSD files. Only solution thus far was to buy a switchable hub and connect all the drives to the hub. Shutting the hub down when I turn off the computer and waiting for Windows to load before turning it on.

My ASUS Z-87 Deluxe didn't have this problem with the same external drives.

Hoping you find a solution.
Darv

[02MiragE__]

zeroarst wrote:
My motherboard is ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi AM4 ATX Motherboard

I have 11 external HDDs connected to my PC, and it takes me about 5 minutes to boot to the Windows. That is insane.

However, booting is fast without those external HDDs attached.

I searched on the internet, apparently many people have the problem. I have tried different solutions but none of them works for me:
1. Disable USB boot priorities



2. Turn on Fast Boot.


3. Set HDD emulation to Hard Drive for all HDDs.


Please help....it is impossible to unplug all HDDs when booting up PC, and re-plug all of them back...it is insane.
There must be a way to boot without having to wait for those HDDs.

Did you ever find a solution?

[jeordiewhite]

I have 5 currently connected and one left as an offline backup that is powered down. I don't have this issue myself and never experienced it.
One thing that does come to mind that can cause very slow start up's is a failing hard disk. I would consider getting hddscan or crystal disk info or gsmartcontrol or any program that will let you view the smart status for your hard drives. This might not be the issue, but with that many hard drives and the nature of the slow start up, it very well could be a culprit.
I know it would be slow and tedious, but you could also unplug each drive one by one and see if any of the booting speeds resolve. External hard drives have controllers + hard disk. Neither are immune to failure.

[DarvinAtkeson]

jeordiewhite wrote:
I have 5 currently connected and one left as an offline backup that is powered down. I don't have this issue myself and never experienced it.
One thing that does come to mind that can cause very slow start up's is a failing hard disk. I would consider getting hddscan or crystal disk info or gsmartcontrol or any program that will let you view the smart status for your hard drives. This might not be the issue, but with that many hard drives and the nature of the slow start up, it very well could be a culprit.
I know it would be slow and tedious, but you could also unplug each drive one by one and see if any of the booting speeds resolve. External hard drives have controllers + hard disk. Neither are immune to failure.

I am pretty sure it is not related to a HD failing.
1. Booting with no USB HD attached results in a boot time of around 15 seconds or less.
2. Adding any single USB HD results in doubling the boot time or just under 30 seconds regardless of which drive I connect.
3. Adding a second USB HD results in roughly an additional 15 seconds.
4. Continue to add USB HD (6 in my case) and your POST times continue to increase till it gets just plain stupid slow.

I am not sure what the heck the BIOS is doing but it's looking through the HDs as on two of my Segate Drives I see the lights start flashing.
I connect the same drives to a much older Z-87 ASUS motherboard and there is NO CHANGE in time to POST.

This is clearly a BIOS Bug in the ASUS 1402 BIOS and possibly earlier BIOS.
I am curious to know if the new Z690 and Z790 motherboards have the same BIOS bug.

I have been in touch with ASUS support for nearly 15 months with no resolution to this problem but I really could use some support from other customers who see this problem. Some of us (artist, videographer, photographers... ) need huge amounts of storage. It doesn't have to be fast but it does need to be huge.

Common ASUS, help us fix this one!
Yeah, I know, they don't read these.
-Darv

[PeskySnowman]

Have had this problem for a long time where having external storage connected by USB would lead to slow boot on my Crosshair VII x470 board.

Interesting to see that the problem is still present on the 500 series boards. Must be an Asus thing.

[Rizlah]

PeskySnowman wrote:
Have had this problem for a long time where having external storage connected by USB would lead to slow boot on my Crosshair VII x470 board.

Interesting to see that the problem is still present on the 500 series boards. Must be an Asus thing.

I have the same issue with a dark hero and 5950x with 64gb g-skill, remove my external drives and it boots in seconds, add the three that i have and reboot and it takes 1 - 2 minutes, very frustrating, couldn't imagine having more external HDDs connected