Question mark appears before boot

I recently installed an SSD in my 2006 macbook pro. After getting it formatted and installed with Snow Leopard I've come across a small problem: when booting, the system initially starts to a grey screen, then to a question mark for about 5-10 seconds. Afterwards, the apple logo appears and it boots as normal.

While this isn't preventing me from using the laptop, I was wondering if there was a way to correct it such that the computer doesn't spend so much time looking for the drive- after all, fast boot times were important to my decision to purchase an SSD.

Any advice on the matter is greatly appreciated.