Re: [tlug] In the beginning there is GRUB... or is there another?

[Dave M G <dave@example.com>]

Darren,

Thank you for replying.

Well, I've almost found the source of the problem.

Long story short: It's an external USB hard drive causing the delay.

Earlier I had tried disconnecting all my USB peripherals, but I forgot 
to disconnect the hard drive because it's the only one that doesn't go 
through a hub. Doh! While I was rebooting to see if the CD-ROM was the 
issue, suddenly it just occurred to me that I had forgot that one USB 
device.

So the bad news is I'm absent minded.

The good news is that if I disconnect this USB HD, my computer boots up 
in no time at all. It's actually kind of impressive how fast it boots.

One problem remains. The external USB HD is a 500GB guy that I use for 
my regular back ups. I use the Gnome "Back In Time" utility (glorified 
rsync, I believe) to back up my home directory every hour.

Which means that I want to leave this HD connected permanently. And I'd 
like to use a USB HD for this purpose because if I get worried something 
is wrong, it's easier to temporarily disconnect the USB to preserve the 
data while I check out the system.

Questions abound. Such as:

Does this mean there is something screwy with the USB HD itself? It 
seems to work perfectly other than this boot issue.

Is there some kind of USB boot time setting I should be looking at?

If this is an indication that the hardware is squicky, then I'll get on 
task and replace it, because I can't sleep at night without the security 
of backups.

However, if maybe there's just some kind of setting...

I checked Google, and came up with two people reporting pretty much the 
exact same thing as me, but with no responses:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=961493
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=870361

Any advice would be much appreciated.

--
Dave M G