i've sent them an email with all the above info. waiting to hear back. for this board, 2 SATA 3.0 ports are controlled by the intel chipset and the other 2 are controlled by the ASRock ASMedia chipset (v1.3.8 is the latest). the SSD has always been on one of the SATA 3.0 ports controlled by the native intel chipset. the other HDDs are connected to the SATA 2.0 ports, which is controlled by the ASRock chipset. i tested with other versions of drivers and the results are below. i tried to uninstall the ASRock SATA drivers and only use one of the Intel drivers, but got a BSOD upon restarting. ASRock SATA drivers v1.3.8 = 40 seconds lag ASRock SATA drivers v1.3.8 + Intel RST drivers v11.7.0.1013 = ~2 minute lag ASRock SATA drivers v1.3.8 + Intel RST drivers v11.6.0.1030 = >2 minute lag i also followed this guide to change to AHCI mode. AHCI mode was already set in UEFI, but i can't be sure if it was like that when i installed the OS. either way, no change in boot delay/lag. i'm not sure why this board is loading the intel drivers so slowly. heck, it's loading its own SATA drivers slowly also