External drive affecting startup

[Barb and Ray]

Can someone tell me why the external hard drive seems to be delaying
startup? It takes 3-4 minutes to come up to the desktop screen, and all that
while the external drive light is blinking.

Western Digital "Book" - 500GB with 465 GB free;
Gateway computer (about 3-4 years old) with 512 MB RAM. No other problems.

 

[DL]

Try the simple solution of removing the external prior to shutting down, &
only reconnect when booted

 

[Ed Covney]

Can someone tell me why the external hard drive seems to be delaying

startup? It takes 3-4 minutes to come up to the desktop screen, and all
that while the external drive light is blinking.

Western Digital "Book" - 500GB with 465 GB free;
Gateway computer (about 3-4 years old) with 512 MB RAM. No other problems.

The BIOS is trying to boot from the ext drive first. It
eventually goes to the #2 choice, the real boot drive.

You may be able to down load a newer BIOS or you
may be stuck with turning it off while booting as DL
suggested.

Ed

 

[M.I.5¾]

Can someone tell me why the external hard drive seems to be delaying
startup? It takes 3-4 minutes to come up to the desktop screen, and all
that while the external drive light is blinking.

Western Digital "Book" - 500GB with 465 GB free;
Gateway computer (about 3-4 years old) with 512 MB RAM. No other problems.

The system is trying to boot from the external drive, but having difficulty
in determining if it bootable or not. You are lucky, many people cannot
boot at all when certain external drives are connected.

Don't switch on the external drive until bootup is well under way.