Hi,
No the 9 second delay is about right for Gigabyte. My GA-790XTA-UD4 is exactly the same and changing the position of your HDD won't make very much difference. And if you think that delay is long, wait until you add a few more HDD's!
I don't know why Gigabyte boards take so long to post and it is one of the few things that MSI, ASUS etc., do a little better.
To help things along a little you can disable the IDE channel (if you are not using it) and also the floppy drive in BIOS.
Other than that I think your mobo is running as it should.