USB booting :: New USB install, slow bootup

I've been using DSL 1.5 on a Sandisk Cruzer Freedom 256Mb pen drive mostly on an AMD 3000+ 512Mb RAM box. Today I bought a Sandisk Cruzer Mini 512Mb pen drive and put DSL on it intending to give it to my brother. Bootup with the new drive starts very slowly and I can't figure out why. It takes over 22 seconds to boot linux24 and minirt24 compared to less than 3 seconds on my old stick. After that everything seems to run at normal speed. Any idea what's happening and how to fix it?

Okay, the boot sector was the problem and I fixed it by reinstalling syslinux using Knoppix. (I guess I could have done it from DSL but I happened to be running Knoppix when I got the idea.) I used the same CD to install DSL on both drives so DSL didn't cause the problem. I formatted the pen drives before I started, the first one using qtparted in Knoppix and the new one using XP. Gates struck again... maybe. Both drives had factory installed software and the first clearly had a hidden partition. The second formats with loss of space for some reason, 489Kb available on a 512Kb chip, so it must have some hidden partition Windows couldn't touch.

original here.