MySQL Take Too Much Time To Start

My MySQL server take too much time to start. I moved the data folder to its own hard disk, but still no improvement.

# uptime;date;service mysqld start;date;uptime;service httpd start
05:46:15 up 5 days, 1:24, 2 users, load average: 0.24, 1.07, 1.23
Wed May 7 05:46:15 CDT 2008
Starting MySQL: [ OK ]
Wed May 7 06:04:21 CDT 2008
06:04:21 up 5 days, 1:42, 1 user, load average: 1.77, 1.65, 1.50
Starting httpd: [ OK ]
#

You see MySQL take 18 minutes to start.

This happens whenever i restart the server or restart mysql.

Here is the process while MySQL starts

# ps aux|grep mysql
root 23549 0.0 0.0 4448 1168 pts/0 S+ 05:24 0:00 /bin/sh /sbin/service mysqld start
root 23556 0.0 0.0 4628 1272 pts/0 S+ 05:24 0:00 /bin/bash /etc/init.d/mysqld start
root 23613 1.5 7.5 157668 154580 pts/0 D+ 05:24 0:01 chown -R mysql:mysql /backup/mysql
root 23780 0.0 0.0 3896 664 pts/1 S+ 05:26 0:00 grep mysql
#

It is chown that make the MySQL startup slow.

MySQL data size is about 11 GB.