I am using a Samsung NVMe 960pro 1TB as my boot disk on a Windows 10 Pro System and there are a total of 6 SATA secondary storage drives attached to my system. With all other HDD’s except “WD Black 5TB” connected my boot time is around 5-7 seconds, however when I connect my “WD Black 5TB” and boot suddenly it is over 35 seconds. BIOS is up to date as well as all the other relevant drivers windows updates etc. The BIOS takes very long to proceed to OS side with WD Black connected. Other specs:
Mobo:Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 Z370 Motherboard
CPU: i7 8700k
SATA DISKS: 1 WD Green 3TB + 1 WD Green 2TB + 1 Seagate 3TB + 1 Seagate 1,5 TB
Any help will be appreciated 
I have WD BLACK 2TB and it is failing. It made windows boot for too long with it attached, as soon as I remove it, the windows boots normally.
I have 3 WD BLACK hard drives and I can say that it is an UTTER GARBAGE. Stay away from that or see how your beloved photos and memories fade to oblivion.
Good job WD on your BLACK series. I had more luck with the BLUE, it lasted longer !
I have no problems with the HDD health so far and I am sorry to hear your bad experience with Blacks. They are supposed to be the premium huh? Looks like my BIOS was having problems detecting the HDDs, however after some thorough testing I am not so sure it was the drive that was causing problems. I did some research and looks like you have to delete the previously created Windows restore points (which are hidden and you do this through:
Control Panel > Advanced System Settings > System Protection > Select the desired HDD > Configure > Delete all restore points for this drive
After doing this restart and boot times dramatically improved from 35-40 seconds to 7-8 seconds with 6 SATA HDD’s connected and booting from NVMe SSD. Look like windows was the problem once again .
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Well, I have formated the HDD - somehow. It is insanely slow, I hear head movement in bursts, in regular cycles - even while in BIOS. Like it is trying to read something - some firmware info from the plates, but it fails. I can access it in windows but it is really really slow. SMART reports nothing unusual, however.
I have switched it with the working HDDs, changed cables for SATA and POWER… I have a good PSU - Cooler Master Vanguard 850… I am out of ideas. Recovery tool reported 10 days(!) ETA until it finishes scanning of the formatted partition, then I will try to recover pictures and other stuff. After that, I’ll consider some other brands. WD simply failed to provide a reliable and quality storage media with the BLACK series.
So - the issue is that it’s insanely slow, like those old hard drives going into PIO mode instead of DMA (if you remember that) slowing down the entire PC…
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I hear you . I had been a Seagate user for the longest time but they kept failing on me so I made the switch to WD 3-4 years ago. Blacks have 5 year warranty so you should RMA it . What other brands are you considering? I mean not very many choices out there, I like Hitachis too but WD owns them now so what do you do I have the same PSU by the way
uuslu, thanks so much for writing about your fix for this problem. My system was taking 5 full minutes to boot, which of course was maddening with my new, custom built PC. I eventually narrowed down the problem to my WD drive. Disk utilities reported that the disk was working fine. I tried changing SATA3 ports, updating drivers, defragged, tweaked BIOS settings, etc. and still no improvement. I was about to try reformatting the drive when I came upon your post. Even though system restore was disabled for that drive, apparently it holds onto old data that needed to be flushed as you described. Now I’m now able to boot in 8 seconds. Thanks again! Much appreciated.
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I am really glad it helped your problem 
Microsoft and its legacy goes on apparently …cheers
Thank you uuslu! 3 years later, I had the same problem with a brand new windows install. Your fix did the trick.
Saved me hours of frustration
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I am happy that you found the this thread. It was driving me nuts back then and managed to find the solution, and really happyto hear that it helps other people too.Cheers
Use a SSD for Windows it will be way faster and use the hard disks for data etc
Not sure why the Black 5TB is slow, maybe it’s time to use WD Data Lifeguard and erase the disk completely so it will refurbish itself
I have NO restore points on ANY drive. I built the system about 2 years ago: MSI MEG Z390 Ace. When I connect my 5TB USB WD drive (originally formatted for XBOX-now formatted as a GPT drive, NTFS), it takes about 45 seconds to be visible to he system. THEN, when I start backing up to it, i get a repeated loud CLICK at about 5 second intervals, which stops after about 2 minutes. This is brand new drive.
As I have explained, sometimes the restore points are hidden and automatically created. Since you have formatted it for Xbox before, it might be another problem related to that. Or then again you might have a problematic drive. Try my suggested solution first, then look for previously xbox formatted drive problems on google, if all fails rma it.
The drive was labeled (by WD) & sold as a “Game Drive” in the store. I converted it to a GPT drive (because it is > 2 TB, then created 2 partitions & formatted it for Windows. It works, but spin-up is very slow. I tried your method. The only visible restore points are on the C: drive (an SSD). This drive is partitions Y: and Z:. The command “vssadmin list shadows” lists only 1 shadow copy restore point, for the E: drive.
delete all those shadow copies they are the culprit
Eliminated ALL shadow copies on ALL drives. WD 5TBdrive still takes over 30 seconds to come online and “clicks” every 2-5 seconds while doing so. Files on both partitions on the drive appear OK (create and validated by Acronis True Image backup). The drive is less than 30 days old. Bought at Bestbuy.
I would return it and get a new one. Preferrably a non-game drive. Maybe that’s the problem.
I looked in the Event Viewer. It seems as if the drive is trying to logon to my system with userid=ADMINSTRADOR. Maybe I DO need to totally low-level format it. Unfortunately, that will wipe out my backups. Lucky I still have old drives I can use.
