Boot times increasing, why?

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 12:13 am

Win 7 pro 64 bit.

3 physical drives - C drive with OS, E drive for data, F drive for secondary backups.

Nothing has been changed, upgraded or installed lately. All of a sudden I started getting hung up at the Windows logo. I had to reset several times. Sometimes a hard shut down and then restart. All of a sudden it decided to run a checkdisk on the "F" drive. I know this drive is going bad but I didn't think it would upset the OS from booting since it only has pictures and videos on it. Since running the checkdisk I do get to log on to Windows without having to go through the restart routine but the start times are still much longer than a couple of weeks ago. By longer I mean 3 to 4 times longer.

Please let me know what other info you may need. For the record I did update my video drivers yesterday thinking this could be one of the problems.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 7:31 am

Do boot times return to normal if you completely unplug the F drive?

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 12:06 pm

That was going to be the next thing to try. I just didn't have any time until the weekend. I'll report back once I give it a shot.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Sun Dec 08, 2013 6:11 pm

Success! After removing the "F" drive everything seems to have reverted back to the normal state.

With that said... I was surprised that a bad drive would cause so much trouble. Especially when it is a non OS drive. I figured it would just die rather than effect system performance.

Faust · Post by **Faust** » Sun Dec 08, 2013 9:05 pm

The system BIOS will still scan the device on POST if for no other reason to see what is attached and read the device BIOS/Firmware/SPD (can't remember which are used on mass storage drives) to self-configure (remember way back when we had to manually set cylinders/sectors/heard in the BIOS?). If the system is asking but the drive ain't answering or is talking gibberish, it can hang.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:43 am

Easto wrote:Success! After removing the "F" drive everything seems to have reverted back to the normal state.

With that said... I was surprised that a bad drive would cause so much trouble. Especially when it is a non OS drive. I figured it would just die rather than effect system performance.

Yup....adding to what Faust said....Post will take longer, but as Windows loads, and just as "explorer" is loading in the background, the drive will be mounted and quickly indexed. If the drive is starting to get unresponsive, you'll notice big increases in time here.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Mon Dec 09, 2013 10:03 am

Thank you (both) for the info. Learn something new everyday. It's a good thing to know my system wasn't taking a dive.