External hard drive foils boot?

So, I find my self saying this a lot recently, but this is one of the strangest things I've seen in a while.
I have a 2010 MacMini that I just got refurbished - 8G RAM, 2.66, and I just replaced the HD to a 750 (the old one was failing). I have two external hard drives. Here is the weird thing. When I boot up, if both external HDs are connected and on, the computer takes forever to boot up and the mouse and keyboard will not function. The computer accepts no input. The minute I turn the smaller drive off - disconnect power - the computer behaves normally. If I boot the computer with only the bigger drive on - with that smaller drive off - my boot time is normal (remarkably fast, actually) and there are no input errors.
I ran AHT and there are zero errors reported. So, I'm guessing it is not the I/O panel (thought to be thorough I should check the different USB ports, I guess). I'm guessing it's the drive doing something strange. But, what could it possible be doing? What interference could it possibly be sending back *in* to the computer?

Yep, they're all connected via USB. They are all on different ports, no hubs. I'll try verbose mode later on. I didn't even think of that. Nice thought. If I looked at the boot logs, any idea what I might be looking for?
I don't know if this helps, but the smaller drive is an old Lacie drive that was removed from its enclosure (notoriously failing Lacie power units and controllers). It was since put into a third-party enclosure of some quality (I can't remember the brand, but a good one). I can use it perfecly fine however before now I've never had it connected to a machine on start-up.

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