Does Computer Get 'Confused' Booting Up With Different Peripheral Configs?

[Wie Gehts]

I have a Mini late 2012. I do confess I have the stock HDD for the system. No upgrade to an SSD.

I have two boot partitions. One has Sierra that I use for music recording. In that configuration I have 3 usb midi controllers, a usb audio interface, an ext fw recording hdd, 2 hdd's in a 2 slot usb bare drive dock and 2 usb hubs connected and a couple copy protection dongles.

The other I use Mavericks so I can keep using Photoshop CS5 & 6 and Lightroom 5 & 6.
The only peripherals I use then is a usb with just my keyboard, a drawing tablet and an ext hdd I have tutorial videos on. All that other stuff I use for music recording is off.

What I notice is that when I use a bare number of peripherals, the computer boots in a certain 'x' amount of time. However, if the next time I boot up with my full whack of peripherals, it's like I can hear the computer having to rethink how the new config is different from the previous one.

I realize the computer needs to 'poll' the various devices, but, geez, sometimes it's taking 3,4,5 minutes to boot up. Thing is, if I do stay on one particular config and boot, the computer is probably 'thinking'... 'ah, no changes made' and in that case doesn't take as long.

 

[Longkeg]

If there was a question in there I suspect you’ve answered it yourself. I suspect, though I’m the first to admit I don’t know for sure, that some config data is saved in firmware. If this saved data agrees with what it sees connected to the machine it fast tracks the startup. If not then everything has to be re-authenticated. Again, I’m just guessing here but it would make sense. Perhaps some of our more learned colleagues could confirm or deny.

 

[Wie Gehts]

Now it booted up fairly quick on the recording side. Weird. I think its in some part, if not all, is that if the config has a conflict happening, it takes a long time. I've been having headaches with, 'plugging in this thing here, then an ext drive won't mount', or my audio interface doesn't work', etc etc, lol.
That and on top of the fact, as far as I read, that Apple's hardware just doesn't like USB much, or is very picky with chipsets or what have you.

Too bad thunderbolt is kinda pricey. I wonder if a TB hub, like OWC sells, would solve these usb issues. I don't know much about TB, but would hope that the USB ports that come on a TB hub, would eliminate any conflicts I have using the Mini's USB ports directly.