XP SP2 MCE 2005 - Slow boot with eSATA HDD connected

[The late XV105]

I have a 1TB Seagate FreeAgent Pro eSATA drive that I use as part of my backup regime. o/s is XP SP2 MCE 2005 and the mobo is an ASUS P5N32-SLI.

When this drive is connected, the PC is very slow to boot through the activities happening when the black "XP progress bar" screen is being shown; instead of the bar whizzing from left to right repeatedly until done, it j-i-t-t-e-r-s from left to right until done. From here on, booting up through password and on to a completely loaded o/s is normal.

Googling for ideas repeatedly mentions the Indexing Service as a likely cause, so given that this eSATA drive is only used for backups, I disabled indexing via RMB Properties on the drive letter in Windows Explorer.

This has made absolutely no difference to the problem described. For the time being I therefore keep the eSATA power supply switched off until after boot has completed, but it would be nice to find a proper solution.

Other ideas, please?

TVM!

[All Ahead Full]

Not sure if this will help, but here goes,

What drive letter is the external disk mounted as?

Should obviously not be C:\

also another thing to try once the PC has booted is to assign the external drive to a mount point, which is a directory within the C:\ drive as opposed to a drive letter such as E:\ F:\ etc...

To do this:

goto Manage my computer, and disk management.

Find the external hard drive on the list of disks displayed.

Right click on the disk, and choose change drive letter or path

Remove the Drive letter

choose OK

goto into explorer, and create a new folder off the root of the c:\ drive called external, or anything you want really

go back to computer management, and disk management.

right click on the drive again, and choose change drive letter or path

Then choose add, and choose mount the drive in an empty NTFS folder, and tye in the directory you just created, in this case it would be C:\external

Choose okay, and okay again, and close down computer management.

Now open up Windows explorer, and you will find the contents of you external disk under c:\external

Re-boot and see what happens.

all the best,

AAF

[The late XV105]

Many thanks, AAF.

The PC in question is used for home audio visual processing including performance intensive video rendering and DVD authoring, so as well as a heap of memory not relevant here, it has extensive HDDs both to spread read/write load (which it does, to great time saving effect) as well as for three levels of backup using the Memeo software that came with the FreeAgent Pro.

My current drives therefore run from C to Q with R tested and working but removed until I need the capacity. The reference to jumpers is because with these removed the performance takes a considerable hike at the expense of a small increase in noise.

In drive letter sequence (which I wrote in non proportional font with padding spaces for ease of reading but the forum software tries to be clever and removed the latter. Grrr) :

C Logical Internal } Disk 1 320GB Seagate Barracuda with jumpers removed
D Logical Internal }
E Logical Internal }
F Logical Internal }
G Physical Internal Disk 0 500GB Seagate Barracuda with jumpers removed
H Physical Internal Disk 2 320GB Seagate Barracuda with jumpers removed
I CF Card reader Disk 3
J SD Card reader Disk 4
K MS Card reader Disk 5
L SMC Card reader Disk 6
M CD-DVD ROM
N CD-DVD ROM
O External USB Disk 8 500GB Lacie
P External SATA Disk 7 1TB Seagate FreeAgent Pro
Q External USB Disk 9 160GB LaCie
R External SATA Disk 10 1TB Seagate FreeAgent Pro

So, the eSATA drive is correctly assigned a letter other than C (P), and it is only with either of P or R (or both) connected that I get the boot performance problem. With them disconnected, boot time is very impressively swift (I would like to think helped by my active housekeeping!)

I tried your trick, but unfortunately the problem remains.
Thanks anyway for suggesting it.

Unless there are other suggestions to try, it therefore looks like I will have to ignore the purist in me and implement a workaround; thinking further about it the most logical is to remove the PCI-E twin eSATA card and replace it with a twin eSATA plate that actually connects via cables to two of my spare SATA ports on the motherboard (I have six SATA ports, and as you can see only three are in use)

I presume that I need something like this (http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/product.php?productid=5455&cat=0&page=) but if any PPRunNer can recommend any specific such hardware from experience, I'd be grateful to learn, thanks.


TVM
XV105

[Saab Dastard]

You don't mention what the PCI-E twin eSATA card is, but I'm sure you can check the documentation to find out how to configure the BIOS if you aren't booting from it. That might be worth trying. Also ensure that you have the most recent firmware for the card, and the most recent XP drivers.

Ask a question of the card manfrs tech support (email queries are usually free) or support forums before going down the route of replacing it.

SD

[The late XV105]

Hi SD.

It's a Silicon Image SiI3132 PCI-E to 2 Port SATA300 card.

All drivers are the latest as confirmed both by trying to force an update in System/Hardware and by visiting Silicon Image support.

ALthough not mentioned, before starting the thread I had played with the BIOS to the limit of what it will allow, including disabling eHDDs from the boot sequence check list, to no effect.

The only thing I learned was that when the eSATA drive is connected and powered up, pressing the "DEL" key to enter BIOS edit mode has no effect; it just sails on past and continues (slowly!) with the boot process!

Normally I would agree on the forums, but here the comments I have found all say "throw the useless heap of junk in the bin", but I was determined not to! I am however in parallel trying to get a reply out of Silicon Image support, and if I do, will post the gist of it here.


Cheers,
XV105

[Saab Dastard]

Fair enough XV - and looking at the link to the internal/external cable I see the price as just £7.40.

At that price I'd actually just buy it and not bother spending any more time!

SD

[The late XV105]

Yup; it's by far the most pragmatic option to take, although as stated, with Computers I am a purist at heart and if a problem exists, it is there to be solved, not worked around! :-)

I'll see out the reply from SI given that I have started the ball rolling, but in all probability will end up buying the adaptor.

Cheers for now,
XV105

[Saab Dastard]

One other thing to try is to rearrange the physical order of the PCIe cards if there is more than one slot.

SD

[The late XV105]

Nice try, and easy to do.
Didn't think of that.
Unfortunately though, no improvement.

Oh well.
Time to raise the flag of surrender.
No joy from SI support so I have just spent £11.10 including Royal Mail postage and ordered the aforementioned converter plate.

Time to get on with life.

Grateful thanks for the ideas along the way during which I have learned a few other things anyway as by-products.

XV105