USB External HD causing freeze on boot up.

I have a Satellite A665-S6086 that I bought a little over a year ago. It's out of warranty. I have a 3 TB external hard drive that I use with this laptop. When it is plugged directly into a USB port, the laptop freezes on boot up, between the Toshiba screen and the Windows screen (the flashing cursor in the upper left corner stops flashing and there is no progression in the boot up sequence). When it is plugged in through a USB hub, there is no problem. I'd like to install a second OS on the external HD, but when it's plugged into a hub, although it registers once Windows is loaded, it doesn't show up in the boot sequence as an option (it doesn't show up in the BIOS settings when plugged in to a hub). Any ideas and help would be greatly appreciated.
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I will have to wait a week to get my hands on it..
Then let's say a bit more.
If it turns out that you cannot install HWSetup, then let's access the BIOS directly outside of Windows. Or you can forget about the utility altogether if you prefer.
You access the BIOS Setup during boot by pressing the F2 key when you see the offer. If there's no offer, press the Esc key. See this Toshiba article.
   BIOS Setup / BIOS settings -- access instructions
You'll see instructions in there on how to set the boot priority and how to save the new settings when you exit the BIOS.
Remember, we want to put the hard drive at the top of the list so that other ports are not interrogated during boot.
-Jerry

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