Solved Slow start up after installing WD Mainstream HDD

[Huldrich]

Hey,

It took some time before realizing that my newly installed 4 TB HDD is causing to start Windows very slowly, almost 2 min on a SSD. Most of this time, it's BootSmssInitTime that is the longest (99s). Bios is updated, Windows too. How can this be fixed?

 

[Ztruker]

Is the 4TB driver partitioned? If not, give that a try, maybe two 2TB partitions.

Also see here: Windows support for hard disks that are larger than 2 TB

 

[Huldrich]

Thanks Ztruker for your link. The problem is that I initialized the drive with GPT instead of MBR. So I guess that there is a problem with the BIOS that does not recognize GPT. This is why it takes 2 min to start. If I initialize the drive with MBR, I can use only 2 TB of it, the rest is not addressable. So I think I will return the disk and buy a 2 TB instead, unless there is a workaround...

 

[MightyMiroWD]

Hi Huldrich,
I would like to ask what is the model of your WD hard drive? What SATA controller is it connected to? Have you updated all the drivers?
I think that there are few possibilities:
1. BIOS taking a long time to detect the drive,
2. Your motherboard's storage controllers are causing problems
3. Driver issues or the way the data is arranged on the drive.
I personally would try these:
- Go through the BIOS settings and change any Hard Disk "time-out" settings to 0 seconds, change the boot order to have your SSD first, the HDD second and CD-ROM/USB last (just make sure you remember to change the boot order if you need to boot from a CD/DVD at some point in the future).
- Check the partition alignment of the storage HDD. Open up the Start Menu or Windows Search and type msinfo32, run it. Go Components > Storage > Disks > find the WD HDD and check the Partition Starting Offset number. Divide it by 4096 in a calculator.

Let me know if I can help you further

 

[Huldrich]

Hi Mighty

I updated the SATA driver from the AMD site but then Windows was unable to go back from MBR to GPT so I had to clean the drive with diskpart, which lasted the whole night... Reinitialized to GPT. It seems to work now with a full 4TB partition. If I had known before that a simple driver update would resolve the problem I could have spared myself 2 days of work...

Thanks for your help

 

[andrew129260]

...........If I had known before that a simple driver update would resolve the problem I could have spared myself 2 days of work...

Thanks for your help

Don't you hate it when that happens?