I've noticed that my Windows 11 boot time is delayed by about 20 seconds because of my 20TB hard drive. My operating system is installed on a PCIe 5 NVMe SSD, and I believe the whole system has to wait for the HDD to spin up before it can move past the BIOS stage. Once the BIOS is finished, Windows boots up from the NVMe in just 2 seconds. The HDD seems to be working normally, as it's mentioned in the manual that it takes around 20-30 seconds to spin up. Is there any way to fix this issue without removing the HDD or changing it to a portable version using a USB-SATA converter?
2 Answers
It might help to just not use the HDD for booting Windows at all. Stick to the SSD since it boots much faster!
Are you sure your boot priority is set up correctly? Sometimes the BIOS checks all connected drives before booting up, and if your HDD is in that mix, it could be slowing things down. You might also want to enable fast boot in your BIOS settings.
I checked the boot priority, and the HDD isn’t set to boot since it’s not a bootable drive. But I see what you mean, the PC probably still spends time checking all drives. I changed settings to show all drives, and it appears after the NVMe.