External Hard drive question... (1 Viewer)

[JayDerek]

I have 2 external hard drives from my Dell XPS400 (in addition to my 80 gig internal). One external hard drive is a Western Digital (160gig) the other manufacturer i can't remember, but it's a 300gig. I have my mp3 files on the WD hard drive (this is where my iTunes points to for the music) along w/ backup files from the other drive. My 300gig hd contains art projects, misc. pictures, movies, and a backup of my music files from the WD drive.

What i'm questioning is almost everytime i'm online and right-click/download something, the Western Digital hd kicks in for 5 seconds or so...so there's a slight delay. This happens even when i'm not saving anything to that drive...normally i save things to my C: drive first and then move to a different drive if needed. Sometimes this happens when i'm opening folders from other drives too.

Now why does that external drive start 'becoming active' during these processes??

Hope someone can help...and let me know if you'd need more info from me to diagnose this.

Thanks!!

~Jason

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Its the opperating system mounting all the drives to give you the drive listings in the window that pops up. It doesn't know where you might want to save it to so the OS gathers info about all the drives that are plugged into your system and offers you the choice...its the delay in querying the drives that takes so long.

 

[JayDerek]

Thank you Andrew! That makes sense...

~Jason

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

You might also want to check your power options on the drives, especially the WD. The drive may be going to sleep when idle, and therefore need to be "woken up" anytime you get ready to do a save.

Regards,

Joe