Looking for advice on /boot (startup times)

Guys, When I hit ENTER at the GRUB screen, it takes 15- 20 seconds to load/analyze/mount my disk drives. I have the same issue with both my LAB server (DELL PowerEdge with SATA drives) and my laptop. How can I optimize this? How is it possible to boot KDE in 7 seconds (or 11 with the standard OSS build). I've tried to create a small boot partition with different file systems etc but to no avail. No mather what I do, it always takes a long time for this initial step. Any advice/tips/trix is appreciated. Cheers, Magnus