HP 8300 Elite won't boot with USB drive > 2.2tb attached

[ma0sm]

This has previously been discussed on these forums here, but there was no resolution, so I thought I'd revive this topic on the off-chance that someone could think of a workaround.

Long story short:

When I turn on my HP 8300 Elite with my 4TB external HDD attached by USB, I see the BIOS details on screen, but it then freezes indefinitely at that point. It doesn't even get far enough to allow me to access the BIOS settings.

When I turn on my HP 8300 Elite without my 4TB external HDD attached by USB, it works fine. If I then reattach the HDD after booting, it works perfectly, and there are no problems.

Things I've tried:

I'm running v03.08 of the BIOS for this computer, the latest one.

I've disabled Fast Boot.

I've disabled all other sources for booting in the BIOS except for the Windows Boot Manager. I've disabled USB boot in general.

I've disabled legacy boot, UEFI only.

My external HDD is GPT with a exFAT file system.

Disabling the USB port in the BIOS works, but unfortunately there's no way there to disable the USB port for boot only.

Every person who's mentioned this problem online that I can find has the conclusion "Just take it out when you boot". My problem is that I'm usually in a different physical location to this computer, so I want to be able to control it fully from afar using wake on LAN etc.

Is there any way I can fool the BIOS into ignoring this HDD being connected, or is my only route to get a different HDD / different computer / NAS adapter connected to the router?

[WAWood]

@ma0sm 

Basically -- NO.  I have exactly the same problem with an HP laptop, and I have looked into this extensively, and unfortunately, there is no way to tell it to NOT try to boot from USB-connected devices.  I have to do the same thing you do -- unplug the drive, boot the laptop, replug the drive.