Very, very, very long boot times with external Thunderbolt drives connected. Help!

[Craig-B]

Braintrust, 

I have been able to determine that my two Glyph Technologies Thunderbolt 32TB RAIDs are causing very, very, long reboot/boot up times...longest timed at 10 minutes. When disconnected (and with USB 3 drives connected), the G9 Workstation boots as quickly as expected. But, when re-connected the Thunderbolt RAIDs, the process is excruciatingly long. 

I have mucked around in the BIOS settings, to include turning of DCA protections/security settings (Thunderbolt), but no luck. 

Any suggestions? 

Thanks. 

[Craig-B]

I disconnected the Thunderbolt 3 RAIDs and the boot times returned to what I expected. Any ideas what may be causing the extended boot times when the Thunderbolt 3 RAIDs are connected? 

[Craig-B]

Without Thunderbolt RAIDs connected, boot time is 30 seconds. When connected, boot time is over 5 minutes. I tested the same RAIDs on a three year old ZBook and boot time was less than one minute. 

I reset BIOS setting to default with no change. 

Boot time remains over 5 minutes when booting into Safe Mode. 

HP Tech Support has no idea what might be causing this. They are sending me a replacement Thunderbolt Flex I/O card to swap out. I doubt this is the issue, as the everyone works fine once booted up into Windows. But, 5+ minute boot times is not normal and shouldn't be expected in a $5,000 workstation. 

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. 

Thanks.