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Boot times slower than before?

M

Mehta23

Android Expert
Since my last reinstall of Windows, boot times seem to be a bit slower than before - the last one was 28 seconds to the log in screen with the GUI on boot being disabled.
It seems like I spend quite a lot of time on the ASUS splash, so I'm not sure if it might be BIOS related?
Only changes I've made since the boot times of old are the addition of another hard drive (not sure if this would be making the difference) and a Windows system image backup.

Help?
 
Mehta23 said:
Since my last reinstall of Windows, boot times seem to be a bit slower than before - the last one was 28 seconds to the log in screen with the GUI on boot being disabled.
It seems like I spend quite a lot of time on the ASUS splash, so I'm not sure if it might be BIOS related?
Only changes I've made since the boot times of old are the addition of another hard drive (not sure if this would be making the difference) and a Windows system image backup.

Help?
Click to expand...

Hello Mehta23. Where did you archive the backup image? I'm thinking that if it's on a partition occupied by anything else, the boot process may be including it in its scan of the drive. If it's on a separate partition (or DVD).. never mind. :D
 
Mehta23 said:
The image is stored on a separate hard drive, which is still installed in my PC>
Click to expand...

We see reports of slower boot times with dual drives quite often.

There are varying reasons and opinions about this.. mine is that it's better to swap out hard drives than actually have two in the same machine. I routinely change from my Linux hard drive to Windows, mostly to keep up with updates to both operating systems.

I'll never go back to Windows permanently, but do use it enough to dedicate it's own hard drive.

Meanwhile.. forgive me for not giving advice on BIOS settings, as that is just too sensitive an area and varies so much from one machine to the other, I just don't mess with it anymore on other peoples computers.

Perhaps somebody else will chime in. ;)
 
Oh right, so we have the culprit! This hard drive is meant to be a backup drive, but I just haven't purchased an enclosure for it yet :P

What would be the safest way to remove the hard drive? Would simply turning the PC off and removing it be ok?
 
Mehta23 said:
Oh right, so we have the culprit! This hard drive is meant to be a backup drive, but I just haven't purchased an enclosure for it yet :P

What would be the safest way to remove the hard drive? Would simply turning the PC off and removing it be ok?
Click to expand...

Yeah. You definitely don't want to take it out while it's active. Lol!

EDIT: Something else that came to mind was to make sure that the boot priority has the SSD first (or whichever contains your OS).
 
Yeah, but I also see an option to "safely remove" from Windows...

I think it might have my optical drive first, but I'll change it and see if it helps :P

edit: would simply deleting the backup off the hard drive do the trick?
edit2: I've deleted al of the backups, but it hasn't improved the boot times. I'll try it again without the third hard drive, see if that makes a difference.
 
I did a quick read test in HDTune, and I found that my reads were about 50MBs slower than they should be :! if that helps with anything...
 
I've also remembered that I moved my user folder (some of it) to the 1TB hard drive, which ,might explain the slower boot times, but doesn't explain slow read speeds...
 
Mehta23 said:
I also see an option to "safely remove" from Windows...
Click to expand...

The drive is connected via USB? If not then the above option doesn't apply.

I think it might have my optical drive first, but I'll change it and see if it helps :P
Click to expand...
It will. ;)

The system goes through the list in order of priority, waiting to see if each drive actually boots an OS. Ideally you want SSD @ #1.

I've deleted al of the backups, but it hasn't improved the boot times.
Click to expand...
Boot time is independent of drive content; it's simply a function of how quickly the BIOS identifies the hardware and the bootstrap routine loads the OS and its drivers.

You'd love watching my system go through POST.... an SSD, a 1TB and a 500GB HDD on SATA, two RAID1 Raptors on a dedicated PCIe adaptor, plus two CF/SD card readers, a printer, 8-axis flight controller, keyboard and mouse on USB. I swear it sighs "At last!" as the OS loads. :D

Mehta23 said:
I did a quick read test in HDTune, and I found that my reads were about 50MBs slower than they should be
Click to expand...

Welcome to the world of fragmentation. :)
 
Thanks for the reply - but I thought ssd's don't fragment?

And no the backup drive is connected via sata.

I've found that removing the backup drive allows for a much quicker boot up but the time spent in bios is roughly the same and I'm still getting lower read speeds in hdtune. I'll try another benchmark soon.
 
Mehta23 said:
I thought ssd's don't fragment?
Click to expand...

Sure they do, it's just that file fragmentation hasn't the same impact on SSDs as it has on platters due to the uniformly low seek times of the former.

I've found that removing the backup drive allows for a much quicker boot up but the time spent in bios is roughly the same
Click to expand...
So where is it faster? On my system the POST is by far the longest part of the boot process.

I'm still getting lower read speeds in hdtune.
Click to expand...
It's only 1/20th of a second. :)
 
Slug said:
Sure they do, it's just that file fragmentation hasn't the same impact on SSDs as it has on platters due to the uniformly low seek times of the former.
Click to expand...
So could I defrag it?

So where is it faster? On my system the POST is by far the longest part of the boot process.
Click to expand...

The windows gui where is says 'windows is loading' is miles faster. Although from the log on screen it takes about the same time.

It's only 1/20th of a second. :)
Click to expand...
Really? It's 50MBs slower... So just over 10% slower than it should be.
 
I'm not sure what exactly did it but I'm more or less close to the previous boot and read speeds. I'll be back once I've checked if gta still runs slowly
 
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