Ridiculously slow boot times on my Mac Pro

[xhale]

I'm getting around 5 minutes to get to the grey Apple screen on my Mac Pro. If I unplug my external hard drive (MyBook 1TB, formatted HSF, USB) it takes 15 seconds. From the Apple logo it takes another 20-30 seconds to fully load OS X. I really don't want to unplug my external drive every time I restart.

I've done a lot of reading and it seems that external drives add to boot time. Most of what I have seen is around 30-60 seconds added to boot. My drive performance once inside OS X is great and there is nothing but data on the drive.

I've repaired permissions on the boot drive and repaired disk on the external with no help. Is there anything I can do at all?

Thanks in advance.

 

[AAPLGeek]

I'm not too sure if its gonna work in your case but you could give it a try.

Go to System Preferences-> System-> Startup Disk and select your 10.6 Install partition and hit restart.

 

[Hellhammer]

Sleep it instead of shutting down. I couldn't care less of my boot time as I shut it down like once a month

 

[Dr.Pants]

Zap PRAM? Doubt it will do anything, but it can't hurt.