Bootup freezes when external hard drive is connected

Question

I have a Dell Optiplex 7010 with Windows 11, and the bootup seems to freeze on the Dell splash screen when I have my external hard drive connected. I've seen that this is apparently a common issue, and all suggestions seem to involve playing around with the BIOS settings. The problem here is I can't even get to the setup screen if the external drive is connected. It will just freeze at the Dell screen even with me hammering the F2 key right as I boot. If I unplug the hard drive before booting, I'm able to get to the setup screen. However, if I plug in the drive once it's already going into setup, the drive doesn't seem to show up (see screenshot below). I'm sort of at a loss here. I think I read a comment somewhere that some hard drives are just formatted a particular way that will confuse the boot process no matter what settings you try. Is that true?

I'm running a Plex server on this computer, so I really need to keep the external drive connected at all times. My computer seems to do a random reboot every few days (another issue I need to look into, I'm sure), so it's annoying to have it get stuck on the startup screen while I'm away from home.

alienlanes · Accepted Answer

Digging up this ancient post to say that I finally got around to buying a new hard drive and transferring my media over. Sure enough, it seems that the exFat formatting of the old drive was indeed the issue. My PC seems to be loading up without issue with the NTFS drive attached.

alienlanes · Answer

I only have one internal drive. The external drive is just a storage drive for media. I am starting to wonder if the formatting of the drive might be an issue. I formatted it as exFAT because I wanted it to be compatible on Windows and Mac machines, and from the little bit of reading I've come across, it sounds like that might be an iffy format for some computers.

bradthetechnut · Answer

Earlier this year on my 7010 MT, I tried running Win10 externally so that I could run 2 different versions of it on 2 different drives, one being a somewhat older version without bugs I don't like that the newer versions have. All Win10 would do is sabotage itself and give me BSOD. Only way to get around it was to reload. I don't think Microsoft wants people to be able to just take a bootable Win10/11 drive from PC to PC.

Fast forward - I have the boot drives in hot swap HDD bays with power switches and 2 external storage drives.

I don't know exactly what you all have internally, but if you have 2 boot drives internally that aren't both Windows,* at startup, select F12 for Boot Menu and select drive to boot from. Any storage drives can be external.

*If Win10/11 detects there's another drive with the same OS, it'll start with "Disk checking" (almost forgot about that part), then BSOD. I also ran across a couple of users in this forum that tried Win10 on one drive and Win11 on another, both internal with no power switches, and got BSOD.

Also a little fyi, my external storage drives are on power switches. If a storage drive is always on, Windows also uses it to detect any other Windows drives. I had to reformat a storage drive after Win10 froze files on it.

bradthetechnut · Answer

'it sounds like that might be an iffy format for some computers.'  It might be.  I'm pretty sure exFAT is a no on Windows PC's.  Preferred format for Win10/11 is NTFS using GPT partition scheme.  When loading 10/11, it also automatically partitions.

bradthetechnut · Answer

No guarantees if using Windows HDD/SSD boot drive externally, but if it works, not a problem.

And now that I think of it, when I had an external drive BSOD, there was probably detection between it and an internal boot drive while I was in the middle of the process. But one thing is for sure, I've had it all working for some time now.

alienlanes · Answer

Okay, I'm definitely thinking the exFAT format might be the root of my problem. I just tested the boot process with a freshly formatted NTFS external drive connected, and it loaded straight to the Windows login screen with no issues.

Can't say I'm terribly eager to have to re-format this drive, but at least this makes a little more sense now.

IT-Dad · Answer

I have the same problem with an Optiplex 7070 sff and a crucial 2 TB drive.  I reformated the drive to NTFS and had the same results.  Left it on the splash screen for 10 minutes with no change.

Levisvv · Answer

I discovered this same issue. I have numerous external (large capacity) Seagate drives, all come standard as exFat as it is more usable on Android and Apple devices as well. So when I try to have this NEW 16TB external drive plugged in, my Dell PC will NOT boot. Not even able to get to the bios.

Formatting this to NTFS is not an option as NTFS is poor with larger drives and as noted above, NTFS is VERY poor when used with other operating systems. This is a standard Core i7 PC why would exFAT not work?

So I can unplug the drive, let the PC boot, then after (into Windows or Linus) I can connect the external drive and it works normally. This is a vary large fail on Dell's behalf. I am not about to have this be my option: what if I am away from home and remote into it and need to restart the PC, then it will be stuck with a big fat DELL logo and not even get into the bios - let alone reboot into an OS.

What can be done to fix this? This is a total DELL failure if there is no way for a Dell Optiplex to boot with an exFAT drive attached (internal or external). Is my option to just buy another brand?

punksm4ck · Answer

Levisvv There is one simple solution. Reformat the ExFAT drive as NTFS, problem solved. Worked for me!  Regards, T

Optiplex Desktops

Bootup freezes when external hard drive is connected

Was this post helpful?