Did you test this on a desktop or were you using a laptop? When ever I see a HD causing a boot issue it's because there's a problem with the drive itself, guessing controller based. Using a USB2 SATA bridge does not remove that problem as it's passing all of the hdparm data. It would be interesting to see, but I'd think that if you cabled it directly via SATA you'd have the same problem.
I connected it to (in, sort of) my desktop, via a 5.25" Icy Dock front bay with perfectly functioning dual 2.5" and 3.5" SATA slots, w/ separate power/eject switches for each drive slot...
This was not any sort of external USB drive removed from a shell, etc. nor was any USB anything used anywhere; this was an old SATA2 spec 2.5"/5400 RPM WD Blue drive, which, per the customer, would eventually boot if you waited...45 minutes!
I replaced the laptop's drive (BTW, thank you, Dell, for making me pull ~15 screws, a DVD player, a few more screws, pry out a keyboard, and a few more screws just to pull the top access plate just to finally access the drive!) not bothering with attempting any sort of clone attempts on it, as the customer said there was nothing from it he needed anyway. So, installed the Crucial SSD, freshly installed WIn10, and now a VERY quick snappy laptop for being only an i3-21xx dual core at 2.1 GHz....no issues there.
Once inserting the failing drive into my own desktop, I saw that it was indeed caution status, with hundreds of reallocated sectors, etc, but, out of curiosity I deleted the partitions, recreated one/quick formatted, noting that the format was taking several minutes vice the normal 10-15 second affair it normally is/always was with many other 5400 rpm laptop drives... (GSmart Control 2 minute Self Test would error out with Red Read Error TImeout after 10% of the test at 20-25 seconds into the test, so, clearly the drive has/had issues, as suspected all along anyway)
Paying attention now to the docking bay's individual front panel drive LED indicator showed orange, that drive's 'busy' indicator, was lit for 3 minutes (odd in light of it being quick formatted and it not being an OS drive, nor selected in BIOS, etc..), all the while seemingly now hanging my 960 EVO system solidly, stuck at the spinning wheel stage for 3 agonizing minutes or so vice it's normal 5-8 seconds... The precise second the 'busy' LED turns from orange to green, the system quickly boots afterward, as if the still painfully slow read activity/status handshake was finally done. How long could it take just to pass drive's make, size, smart status, etc., if freshly formatted? Answer: sometimes at least 3 minutes)
Reboot, same thing, so, not a 'one-off' random glitch.
Shutdown, power off the drive's pwr switch to the laptop drive, boot time sequence restored to VERY fast, i.e, 3-5 seconds in BIOS/POST, 3 seconds WIndows Busy icon, 8 seconds or so total to desktop. (No, my system at was at no time ever attempting to boot from the empty laptop drive.)
Near as I can tell, as WIndows certainly inventories attached hardware during every bootup, this particular failing drive, even though effectively empty via a quick format , will lengthen that process if/when the drive is experiencing agonizingly slow reads, in this case, needing 3 minutes just to pass basic status info, effectively, "WD, empty drive, 500 GB, 5400 RPM, etc.."
With a good drive inserted, say, a functioning 1 TB Toshiba, with only a a few backup files stored on it, bootup times unaffected, as it should be. Reinsert this
I'm sure everyone has seen failing drives take a long time to boot (when the boot drive) ,or, be slow to read/populate file explorer, etc...
It's just my first time one has dragged down/massively slowed bootup when merely connected , despite not even being involved in the boot process....(beyond just 'being there'/inventory , showing status, populating File Explorer...)
I should have resisted the temptation to even
look at it further beyond it's Caution status and 152 hex reallocated sectors...! Customer wanted it back, i explained what it was going to cause, and happily returned it, and wished him well.....!
