My windows startup is greatly slowed by my RAID!

I have 3 disks -- 2x Samsung SSD in RAID 0 through a Dell perc h330, and one Corsair SSD connected to the motherboard.

Windows is installed on the Corsair SSD. The RAID has no file on it currently.

Each time my machine boots, initialization of RAID costs roughly 40 secs. I disabled the RAID bios in MB CSM settings so that it doesn't show the black screen of initialization, but it doesn't save any time, for the 40 secs are added to the windows startup screen i.e. the circle dots, walks 30+ cycles.

I suspect that is because windows is still waiting for the Raid to get ready before entering desktop. But that wastes a lot of time. Must windows wait for that piece of hardware to get ready before entering desktop? Why these two processes aren't parallel when windows doesn't depend on the raid?

My question is, is there any way to bypass the wait time and boot into desktop first?

Thanks

Hi,

According to your description, you've already disabled the raid bios but still has a long boot time. We might take other factors into consideration such as other hardware components, applications, network, etc.

Please see detailed information in this link:

Root Causes for Slow Boots and Logons (sbsl)

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/10130.root-causes-for-slow-boots-and-logons-sbsl.aspx

Or you might refer to some discussions in the following link:

https://communities.intel.com/message/241965

NOTE This response contains a reference to a third party World Wide Web site. Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. Microsoft does not control these sites and has not tested any software or information found on these sites.

Thanks, though my problem still can't be solved.

Now there's some more details:

1. before I installed the raid, windows 8.1 boot costs less than 20 secs, from the power button to fully booted.

2. If sleep the PC instead of shutdown or restart, the next wake up process doesn't include the initialization of raid at all and only cost less than 10 secs, (even if I unplugged the power wire connector after sleep). It's sure that all data in temporary memory are gone cuz unplugged, only those on hard disks remain.

It's evident the slow boot is caused by the newly installed raid, and windows has the ability to bypass raid initialization, at least in waking up process. My question again, is, how to fully bypass the raid initialization in windows boot? I'm also interested in the whole mechanism of windows start up.

Maybe you can remove completely the raid controller and update to the latest bios

Please see how users solved this issue:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19461812

this is bootup process you can find on MS website :

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/windows/dn168167.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11341.the-windows-7-boot-process-sbsl.aspx

• Edited by jzmine 23 hours 23 minutes ago

Maybe you can remove completely the raid controller and update to the latest bios

Please see how users solved this issue:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19461812

this is bootup process you can find on MS website :

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/windows/dn168167.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11341.the-windows-7-boot-process-sbsl.aspx

• Edited by jzmine Tuesday, April 07, 2015 7:59 AM
• Marked as answer by Roger LuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Wednesday, April 08, 2015 11:13 AM

Maybe you can remove completely the raid controller and update to the latest bios

Please see how users solved this issue:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19461812

this is bootup process you can find on MS website :

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/windows/dn168167.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11341.the-windows-7-boot-process-sbsl.aspx

• Edited by jzmine Tuesday, April 07, 2015 7:59 AM
• Marked as answer by Roger LuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Wednesday, April 08, 2015 11:13 AM

Thanks!

Sorry for my ignorance. After proper MB bios settings and raid card bios settings, Windows indeed ignores raid initialization and boots strait into desktop. The raid initializes in background, twenty or more seconds after the desktop shows up, files in the raid become accessible.

An interesting thing is that this kind of happy boot only occur when power up. Any restart sadly includes the initialization time. I've not yet tested reset.

still thanks, my problem is practically solved!