0

With ONLY my lovely NVME plugged into an x4 PCI-E slot, I can post/enumerate and boot within about 12-15 seconds (which is a bit slower than I'd like, but faster than the win 95 days =).

However, I presently have three >= 2 TB HDDs, a 256 SSD, and two external HDDs >= 1 TB plugged in via USB 3.0 as well. With all these extra drives, it takes a whopping 30-40 seconds to POST/enumerate, then another 10-15 to boot. I know I'm spoiled here, but I'd really like to lower that POST/enumerate time to reasonable levels.

Assuming this behavior is normal and not a quirk of a particular hardware combination, I have a few ideas for a fix -- but first I'd rather see if anyone has some wisdom before I influence responses. An ideal solution would be fully or mostly automated.

I'm booting UEFI with all other boot sources turned off (including PXE).

Note that a factory reset of the BIOS and a clean install of Windows does not change the POST time when all of the drives are plugged in. Fastboot on/off doesn't change the POST time.

OTHER SPECS

-XPG SX8200 PCIe NVMe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 240GB SSD (ASX8200NP-240GT-C)

-Three of 2 or 3 TB (HGST Ultrastar 7K3000 HUA723030ALA640 7200 RPM 64MB Cache)

-Samsung 850 EVO 256 GB

-Porsche Lacie minimus 2 TB External (self-powered)

-Some no-name 1 TB external (usb-powered)

-x370 gaming pro carbon (latest firmware) MOBO

-Ryzen 5 1600 (not overclocked)

-16 GB RAM @ 3200 Mhz F4-3200C14D-16GFX (and some self-tuned timing adjustments)

-GTX 1080 (Aorus Xtreme 2nd Gen)

-CORSAIR TX-M Series CP-9020133-NA 550W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS 2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Semi-Modular Power Supply

-LOTS of air cooling

-SATA BluRay Drive (presence doesn't appreciably affect POST time)

(Note that this motherboard claims to support hot plugging SATA drives, but I haven't tested the theory).

Improve this question
4
  • This post suggests I may have an issue with enumeration. I'll look into that and report back.
    – Zediiiii
    Commented Feb 25, 2019 at 20:35
  • The last comment in this thread suggests that turning off write caching might solve this problem, and the effects are probably minimal to my system speed if I'm running a gen 3 NVME for my programs.
    – Zediiiii
    Commented Feb 25, 2019 at 20:41
  • This post suggests making sure all of your secondary disk partitions are inactive (eg, via minitool partition manager) and checking drivers for hubs and other cheap devices.
    – Zediiiii
    Commented Feb 25, 2019 at 21:04
  • MSI support suggested that "enabling WHQL Support in the Windows OS configuration menu may also help with boot time"
    – Zediiiii
    Commented Feb 26, 2019 at 18:06

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Set the boot priority to only boot the correct device in the bios. Right now it maybe trying to boot from every USB device first (which while faster than the usb1.1 days, USB is still relatively slow for booting from.)

Turn off any sign of PXE booting, as you're not using that either.

Other than doing this, the only other options are looking into bios upgrades which may offer better booting options.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    Good comment, I edited the question to include relevant details - mainly, all other boot devices are excluded in BIOS, I'm booting via UEFI protocol, no RAID, PXE off. Do you mean BIOS firmware upgrades? I'm running the most recent update on an enthusiast-grade MOBO, so I suspect that is a bust. What I don't know is if this is normal behavior for other MOBOs as well when using so many drives.
    – Zediiiii
    Commented Feb 25, 2019 at 20:26
  • 1
    My motherboard is (was? - it's old) meant to be great, and it takes 10-15 seconds to get past the bios screen.
    – djsmiley2kStaysInside
    Commented Feb 25, 2019 at 20:39
  • With only my samsung 850 EVO, I used to get past BIOS and boot so quickly that my 1st monitor would get confused because it hadn't caught changed input to DP by the time boot was complete, which made the system think there was only one monitor (4-8 seconds total for boot). I suppose I don't have to deal with that anymore... =)
    – Zediiiii
    Commented Feb 25, 2019 at 20:46

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .