Boot times on SSD and more

H2os

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Jan 8, 2009
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Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to help me.

My System:
Intel Core i5-2380p 3.1ghz
8gig Ram
GTX 550Ti
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H
2 SSDs:
OCZ-Agility 3(Boot Drive) 120g
Kingston SH103S3 120g
3 HDDS:
2 Samungs 300g each
WDC 1TB
Windows 7 (currently running Windows 8 (Release Preview))

It started a few months ago. Randomly my boot time would be sluggish(varying from 1minute up to 5 minutes). After a few reboots everything seemed fine again. Up until yesterday. I have the OCZ as my boot drive, and use the WDC 1tb as the destination of most of my files, installing of programs I don't want on the SSDs.

Yesterday Accessing the WDC drive would make the computer hang. Whenever I clicked on directories on that drive it'd take a few seconds to a few minutes to open. Browsing the directories on the other drives worked without an pauses or hang ups. but with each reboot my boot time would get longer and longer. Eventually doing anything on my computer was becoming so sluggish. I thought maybe a virus. I ran the checks, Spybot SD and Microsoft security essentials. Neither of them found anything. I thought maybe my WDC drive was starting to fail.

I thought I had heard a weird ticking yesterday(I could of been imagining things, cause as of today it's not making any ticking noises.)

Anyways, I managed to download CrystalDiskInfo and after a lot of hangs, I got the program running in safe mode(directory search still hung in Safe mode). It reported all the HDDs as healthy (I will admit I didn't understand much of what the program shows).

At a loss of what I could do I decided to do a clean install on my system. Wanting to see what Windows 8 was like before it came out, I installed the Pre Release. Installed Drivers, updated Bios, and ran Windows Update. I wasn't getting anymore hangs. Although I'm not making much use of the WDC drive at the moment. Anyways my boot times have been up and down. since I've installed Windows 8 I've kept a record of all my reboots and a few notes on the boot times. I followed a guide on setting up the SSD for windows 8.

Here's my notes from my reboots:
1st Reboot: Quick(maybe around 10 seconds)
2nd Reboot: Long took approx. 4-5 minutes
3rd Reboot: complete shutdown, waited a few seconds and turned on(approx. 1-2 minute to boot)
4th: removed external usb HDD (approx. 3-4 to boot)
5th: Unplugged all peripherals. had monitor, keyboard and mouse hooked up(moved mouse and keyboard to first 2 usb slots on back of PC) booted quick, approx. 10 seconds
6th: same setup as reboot 5. booted quick
7th: updated Bios to F15 for my MB. Booted Quick
8th: Restarted back to long reboot. About 4 minutes.
9th: shutdown completely, took about 2 minutes to reboot.
10th: was shutoff for the night, booted quickly
11th:restarted to test it, quick boot
12th: another test, quick boot
13th: Installed a few programs, rebooted, back to a long boot(pc was left on for awhile)
14th: Boot took longer than in boot 13. Took 5+ minutes
15: Removed 1tb HDD booted Quick
16: reattached 1tb HDD booted quick.

So this is where I am. I'm not sure what's causing the ups and downs of my booting. Seem like the longer it's on, the worse the boot is if I don't let it sit off for awhile(this may not be true.)

Edit: I told msconfig to reboot using just the basics running, and it won't boot up, it posts, and just sits on the windows splash screen
 

H2os

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Jan 8, 2009
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Well I've started over again. This time I removed all my hdds but the Kingston ssd. Installed windows, update drivers, chipset, etc.. Connect each hdd 1 at a time, rebooting. Reboots have been fine. Finally get to my last hdd, the 1tb one, and my reboots are super slow again. I disconnect the 1TB hdd and reboot, it's quick again. Am I running too many hdds? If I'm not, any idea why a non boot drive would slow down the boot?
 
You can tack as many HDD's you want onto the system, shouldn't impact performance in any way.

The drive itself may be failing, which is supported by the fact using it is slow.

If you can get it to run, use the disk checker utility in Windows to see if its faulty.
Though regardless of what it comes up with, I would start backing up whatever's on that drive.