I have an old laptop running Linux version 4.8.0-1-amd64 (Debian 5.4.1-3)
that I use as a "headless" server for backups and Plex. It has two USB
drives attached to it for the backups and the media files.

I have issues whenever I reboot the laptop. It appears to be trying to boot
off the backup USB drive for hours, then gives up and goes to the internal
hard drive and boots the rest of the way. It freezes in the initial bios
boot up screen. F2 and F12 do not respond...it is as if the machine is
frozen or dead, but eventually it does complete booting up. The last entry
in the bios screen is the name of the back up USB drive, then it hangs for
a long time. Eventually it gets to the next entry for the bios screen which
is enabling the touchpad, and continues to boot from there.

* In the bios, I changed the boot order to start with the internal hard
drive, then the CD/DVD, and then the USB devices are disabled.

* I moved mounting the usb drives from /etc/fstab to autofs, which seems to
work just fine. Once the machine is running, I can access the two drives. I
had the same booting issues when the drives were listed in /etc/fstab.

* If I remove the backup USB drive and then reboot, the laptop boots
normally and does not hang in the initial bios screen.

* I tried moving the backup USB drive to another port (there are four in
the laptop), but nothing changes.

Some technical details on the drives -

Hard drive the system should boot from:

root@orca:/home/mark# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00043575

Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *          2048 1920129023 1920126976 915.6G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2       1920131070 1953523711   33392642  15.9G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       1920131072 1953523711   33392640  15.9G 82 Linux swap /
Solaris

Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.

backup USB

root@orca:/home/mark# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 2.7 TiB, 3000558944256 bytes, 732558336 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00028375

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1         256 732558335 732558080  2.7T 83 Linux

Plex media USB. NTFS because I trade media with folks who only have
Windoze. I use fuse to access it.

root@orca:/home/mark# fdisk -l /dev/sdc
Disk /dev/sdc: 1.8 TiB, 2000365289472 bytes, 3906963456 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x48f9a2e9

Device     Boot Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1        2048 3906963455 3906961408  1.8T  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Any thoughts you might have on fixing this annoyance would be greatly
appreciated!

Mark
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