I feel like Ive tried everything to get windows to boot fast with my wd hdd plugged in but to no avail

Things Ive tried.
Chkdsk to check for bad sectors, didnt find any.
Different sata cable.
Different sata port.
Fastboot enabled & disabled in windows and in my motherboard
Disabled superfetch
Tried to delete all restore points(if there were any)
Tried with secureboot on & off
CSM on & off
Bunch of different windows versions (RS5, 19/1, 20/1)
Deleted bunch off data (was 50gb space left now 1.7tb)
Smart status is healthy except some crc ultradma.
Tried with default motherboard settings.
I disable sata ports always during windows install.

Ive already spend 1 week to try to get windows to boot fast.;(

I have 1800x and rog crosshair vi Hero with latest bios.

Its really weird as slow samsung's laptop drive 2tb 5200rpm which is full of data affects boot time only like 2 or 3 secs while my wd drive over 20 secs

I havent tried to do a full format.. as this drive has lot of important kontakt libraries, chkdsk took like 1 and half day i'm afraid who long would full format take, but Im seriously running out of ideas, windows seems to wait this drive during startup, fetching something but I dont know what it could be, as this is a pure windows reinstall.

 

try defragging your disk, no joke lol

 

Did you try changing the boot order?

 

I use hotswap with Hdd bays to circumvent this prob allround better solution to having all drives on @ all times when not in use Usual NVme fast boot ensured

 

i'm Afraid there's probably no way out of this, but for now look for a hot-swapable option and disable it in your bios.

quick question thought, have you upgraded your bios to the latest one?

 

fragmentation rate is only like 2 percent, I tested hot plug on & off no change , Im thinking if I should re format this into exfat or something (when I get new hdd's or ssd's for kontakt libraries)

Yes Im on latest bios version, I remember that many months back when I fresh installed windows (because this very problem) my fresh installed windows started to boot normally like it should but when windows auto updated my windows version and slow boot times were back even tho I blocked windows update back then, I always thought that slow boot times were only because windows update messed something up, so I decided to do fresh install again but to my surprise it didnt fix slow booting this time. Without that hdd, it boots super fast instantly, windows cursor wont even have time to spin.

this hard drives actuator seems to move quite often (between 5 to 10 secs intervals) when my PC is on even without doing anything with the drive and task manager doesn't record any usage

 

I've had Windows 10 since 2015 and it's gotten progressively slower. I also have multiple ext HDs. Windows updates wouldn't work for about a year. I finally downloaded an official Win 10 ISO from early 2020 and nuked the whole main drive. Format and complete reinstall and it's like having a new computer again. Boots up fast even with the ext HDs connected.

 

How's your power supply?

 

My power supply is Sea sonic snow silent 1050watts

 

@WarpenN1
Try to connect this drive to a different computer/laptop: if it's still slow then you will know that something is wrong with the drive. Otherwise, your other computer is the culprit.

 

What sata driver? Here intel driver boots much slower then standard windows one. But it might not be worth it since intel driver is better at multiple drives at fast speeds simultaneously.
Oh and if it is caused by the drive itself check smart values! Might be dying.

 

I have default sata drivers which come with windows

https://ibb.co/0Yjwpwd This is the smart status of this drive

 

can be a corrupt drive,
also check if the drive has latest firmware and your mobo has latest BIOS,
maybe explore BIOS settings for partial boot initialization, and explore/adjust BIOS power settings - recently literally every second PC misbehaves because BIOS power management clashes with Windows 10 power management and most people don't even know it's possible to disable those things in BIOS and let Windows 10 do the job on OS level (similarly as it's done on proper hackintosh, with disabled CPU C states etc..)

 

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Perfor...btm_next_3?pageNumber=3&filterByStar=one_star
one reviews there says "computer took much longer to boot" and lot of are complaining about the "clicking noises" that are meant to prolong the life of this HDD, maybe this drive is not that good? What kind of good 10-16tb drives would anyone recommend? For mass storage, gonna buy at least one 4TB samsung evo for kontakt libraries.

 

When I re assign letter for this drive, it takes good 10 to 15 secs for it to recognize the drive again

 

definitely sounds like the drive might be dying.....back it up

 

Very weird that this drive passes wd digital's lifeguard extended test without any problems, or even a single bad sector. its just slow at responding when windows boots or when windows have to re recognize drive, no other problems, speed is pretty decent too. its bothering me too much lol

If it just this drives firmwares fault, can anyone recommend me good 10-14TB drive?

 

Last edited: Apr 9, 2020

loook into windows setup are your drives going to sleep go deeper are the always active they need to be
get an SSD you can install libraries on a 2nd drive I dont trust 3 and 6 tb Drives they fail 2 and 4 are better
also start raid 5 after that you will need the saftey as your storage gets larger

 

That is not insignificant, although it is under the nominal 5%. You may wanna check your drive with Crystal Disk Info and benchmark it with Crystal Disk Mark. Don't trust WD's apps, they have been known to actually present false information in the recent past.
If the drive behaves normally within Windows but the boot is stalling, then you shouldn't really be looking for faults at the hard drive but rather the Sata controller. And of course any other settings. Try putting the drive in another Sata slot and see what gives, just don't forget this may change the drive's letter and your softies will lose link to their libs, so keep note of the drive's letter so you can change it back if this happens.
Also,like tzzsmk said, disable all c-states from bios and make sure nothing is set to sleep or hibernate within windows power options.
If you have an ssd for system drive and 16 gb of ram you need no more than 4gb for a pagefile and that's just for fk's sake really and just delete the hibernate file that Windows makes.
Cheers
PS: The fastest desktop hdd should be the Seagate BarraCuda Pro 14 tb, but it isn't cheap.

 

just out of curiosity, I unpplugged my 5 internal HDDs from my hackintosh to see any improvements, and actually there are,
I assume larger internal HDDs require more time to spin up and therefore prevent BIOS from booting quicker, also when OS is running, having no HDDs means no idle wakeups when performing any disk-related asks like file search, file copying, disk management etc..
also I remember from years back some HDDs like 4TB WD Blacks (and bigger) fail to appear on Mac Pro 2010-2012 after reboot, because the boot sequence is not waiting for them to properly initialize, which kinda confirms my theory above