USB Booting Woes

[Mark Phillips]

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.

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

Mark
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