external hard drive weirdness

[Adam Myrow]

I recently purchased a Seagate Backup+ 1TB USB external hard drive.  It 
works perfectly if I connect it after Linux is booted, but if it is 
plugged in when the computer first boots, it never gets recognized. 
Linux produces an error containing "device descriptor read/all, error 
-110."  I've searched Google for this error, but haven't found anything 
about it.  The drive also is not seen by Windows unless it is plugged in 
after the boot starts.  Before I assume the drive is defective, I wanted 
to check if anybody else has ran into this.