Computer will not boot if external USB hard drives are connected Acer ATC-280-EB11

My Acer ATC-280-EB11 desktop computer will not boot if there are any external USB hard drives connected. I have to shut the external drives off or unplug the cables whenever I have to reboot the computer. I've gone into the BIOS setup and tried both enabling and disabling Legacy USB support but that does not solve the problem. It is currently enables. I had the same problem with my last Acer desktop computer but never did resolve it. When I try to boot the computer with an external drive connected the BIOS self test stalls when it gets to the hard drives and never recovers. Is there a fix for this other than shutting of the external drives whenever I need to restart the computer?

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billsey

Which power supply came with your model? They had 200W, 220W, 300W and 500W over the whole series. Do you have a powered USB hub you could try?

Stevemopolis

The external drives are all externally powered and do not draw power from the computer. I've tried connecting them to a USB hub without success.

billsey

Does the system have any issues if you plug the external drive in after booting? How are the partitions setup on the external? Could it be trying to boot from the external drive maybe?

Stevemopolis

There are no issues if I reconnect the drives after POST. According to the boot sequence in the BIOS setup the computer should always be trying to boot from the local hard drive boot partition. The computer is used as a media server and has on old USB2 RAID array connected which does not need to be disconnected. It also has 4 USB3 externally powered hard drives connected to it. I now have those drives' power supplies all connected to the same power bar so I can manually power them down before rebooting the computer. Strangely enough, I had the same problem with the previous Acer computer I was using.