Why wont my Mac pro start if a usb drive is connected?

....even if an empty little mac os journelled 250mb flash drive is inserted on startup, osx kinda waits until i pull it out to move off the white screen and give me the desktop...
its not a big problem because as soon as i disconnect any usb device it gets going but i was just wondering if anyone knew why it does it and if it could possibly highlight any bigger issues?
thanks,
steve

I am having the same problem. I got a 1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent USB hard drive. It was brand new but formatted Fat Dos. I used disk utility to partition the drive (only way it would format it) to the choice for GUID or something that said it would work with intel mac. I got the drive working fine showing up in finder etc. I rebooted the computer and it hung on a gray screen and eventually a folder with a question mark came up flashing. If I hit the power button on the Mac pro and disconnect the usb drive it boots fine. If I restart the computer without the drive attached it boots fine. If the drive is connected it will not reboot. Does the Mac think that the USB drive is the boot drive? How would this happen and how would I correct it? I need to use this drive as a backup drive for Time Machine as my time capsule is full. Please help

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