Hard drive recognition problem in first boot

I have a very annoying problem, and since I can't find a hardware solution, I wonder if there's a workaround in software: I'm using Openmediavault, installed to an USB stick, on an old Asus Pundit P1-AH1 PC. I've recently bought a 3 Tb hard drive for this machine, but the problem is that the disk takes too long to "boot", and therefore it's not recognized by the computer when it's turned on. This causes OMV to hang during the boot time. If I reboot the computer when this happens, the hard disk is recognized by the BIOS and OMV boots fine.

The problem is that I don't keep this machine on all the time, and I'd like to start it when needed via wake-on-lan. Obviously, WOL is useless if I have to physically go and reboot the PC, so what alternatives do I have ? Ideally, if OMV immediately rebooted instead of hanging, it would be enough of a workaround (even though the total boot time would be slower). Or is there any other alternative ?

Thanks and regards,
Marcos

Thanks for the reply !

That didn't work though, since the delay is after the BIOS hasn't detected the hard drive. So, until I can replace the outdated hardware, I guess my best bet will be to make OMV somehow reboot instead of halting when the disk is not available. The total boot time will be slow, but I'll have to live with that until I get a new server.

Any ideas ?