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DarvinAtkeson · ‎08-18-2021

One last post of weirdness for the night.

From a Cold Boot
With my external USB drives connected it can take several minutes (between 1 and 3 minutes) just to show the BIOS post screen. Best time thus far is 1:20 seconds just to display the butterfly. And then it may take up to another minute to show the Windows Loading screen.

If I disconnect my USB drieves, the system will show BIOS post in about 32 seconds with the Windows loading just 20 seconds or so later.

What the hell is the BIOS doing for several minutes in regards to external USB drives?
And more importantly is there a way to turn it off so my system boots faster.

None of the USB drives contain any boot information. They are all just NTFS drives containing data.
External drives are USB 3.0 Western Digital drives except for 1 Segate USB 3.0 drive.
Total USB drives = 6 drives ranging between 4 and 10 TB.

As always, thanks in advance for any suggestions.

-Darv

MoKiChU · ‎08-18-2021

Hi,

Go in your BIOS :

Advanced Mode (F7) > Boot tab :

Boot Configuration > POST delay time : 0 sec

CSM > Launch CSM : Disabled

Secure Boot > OS Type : Windows UEFI Mode

Boot Option Priorities :

Boot Option #1 : Windows Boot Manager

Boot Option #2, 3, 4 ... : Disabled

Save & Exit (F10)

[INDEX] All My Drivers/Firmware/Software Threads
[ALTERNATIVE INDEX] All My Drivers/Firmware/Software Threads

kubr0 · ‎08-18-2021

I run nowhere near the storage capacity of external drives as you do, but got the same mobo as you and was doing some cleaning up on my external drives over the past weekend, while I also restarted my PC a few times. There was 0 delay in booting. However, I got a USB hub which is connected to the USB 3.0 port on the back of the PC and had 3x 1TB WD drives and 1x 512GB Samsung USB stick connected to it. Maybe the USB-hub is making the difference there?

I seen reports about such a symptom in the past though and would guess that the mobo doesnt like one of the drivers, for whatever reason. You should test connecting the drives 1 by 1 to your PC and each time doing a cold boot to see which one is causing the delay.

DarvinAtkeson · ‎08-19-2021

I don't need it to be fast, just massive as I am storing Nikon D850 NEF files and Photoshop PST files and the final JPEGs that get posted to various sites.

Still even a slow drive shouldn't take the BIOS several minutes to find the MBR of 6 drives.
And I would also think my older ASUS Z-87 Deluxe would have had the problem. It was slower with them connected but not this slow.

Thanks for the feedback.
Darv

DarvinAtkeson · ‎08-19-2021

kubr0 wrote:
There was 0 delay in booting. However, I got a USB hub which is connected to the USB 3.0 port on the back of the PC and had 3x 1TB WD drives and 1x 512GB Samsung USB stick connected to it. Maybe the USB-hub is making the difference there?

Before posting I had purchased a USB hub mainly because it created a rats nest behind the PC. It has a switch for each USB 3.0 connection. Near as I can tell it's not one specific drive just the total number of drives and it seems to be exponential with the number of drives on causing more and more delay. It's not too bad with two or three drives connected but gets really horrible with all six connected. Weird thing is my older ASUS Z-87 Deluxe didn't seem to have any problem with all 6 drives plugged in. It was fairly swift at posting. But thanks to Microsoft that system isn't supported with Windows 11 so I wanted to upgrade and I wanted to stay with ASUS.

Gotta say I love this motherboard but it has been a bit flaky thus far.

At any rate because I do have a switched hub I can turn all the drives off till Windows boots which is really fast with them all off. Then turn the drives on as I need them. That will also have the effect of saving my data from any ransomware should I be dumb enough to click on something I shouldn't. Shame the USB hub didn't come with a master switch too. 🙂

Thanks for the feedback. I am not giving up on this though.
There is no reason BIOS shouldn't be fast even if it is having to look at every MBR on six USB 3.0 drives.

nailmaker · ‎09-06-2021

i too have the same problem.. had a switched usb powered hub for 6 external drives and took forever to boot up.. got rid of the hubs and plugged the drives into the i/o ports on the back and it sped up.. i think the hub is slowing things down.. external hubs are just splitters and not actual chipsets.. if more than one plugged in it starts splitting the bandwidth.. went back to a pcie x1 usb card and plugged them into it.. problem went away

BigJohnny · ‎08-18-2021

Still searches those drives for MBR records. My guess is thats whats taking so much time. Personally I dont have any external drives I leave plugged in. You also have to take into account USB is slow compared to anyting you have thats an internal drive. You might try disabling CSM if you havent already.

kubr0 · ‎09-07-2021

got the Maximus XIII Hero and I am using it with the TP-LINK UH700 USB hub and I do not see the same behavior. The USB hub is connected to the mobo via my monitors USB upstream - ViewSonic Elite XG270QG, to make it more complicated. By default I got 1x 1TB external drive, 1x 256GB USB key and 1x 32GB USB key connected, no issues at all. Might be down to the USB hub that you are using?

BIOS post screen EXTREMELY slow!!! Maximus XIII Hero