External Drive Painfully Slow

Problem Solved Remove Thread

 

We'd still like to hear what the problem was...and how you fixed it. That might help other members in the future!

 

Problem: SimpleTech 320GB External, 2 weeks old, Folder: Video, contents 65GB. Added a few videos to total about 70GB. went from .5 seconds to 3 minutes to load folder contents, added to windows index sped up folder load to original speed.

NEW DEVELOPMENT: still runs like crap, iso image ran from drive pauses every 2 minutes for like 10 seconds, files take very long and sometimes freeze trying to edit attributes. Went into task manager, saw two instances of xfire, though not using abnormal system resources, closed them, problem stopped. FAR OUT.

 

Its happening again, now I have no idea what to do, if you have 77.7GB in a folder on an external drive should it take 45-60 seconds to view the folder contents? Vista is once again on my S*** list.

>>>Its getting worse and worse every time I try to open the folder. I try to transfer something to the folder and it says the file location doesn't exist, even though I know it is on my hard drive and I can open the movie and watch it.

 

Advice: meh

 

Disable indexing and system restore for that drive. Vista is probably caching a whole bunch of stuff.

Ditch the USB hub if you are using one, plug straight into the computer. Make sure you have a AC adapter on it too (required for 3.5" drives, recommended for 2.5" drives without a Y-USB cable).

 

I have a SimpleTech 500GB USB external hard drive. Plug it straight into the computer as Greg said. I find on a hub the quality really disintegrates. Leave those things for the mouse, the printer, digital camera, etc.

 

I already had system restore turned off, and I reset indexing to default, but to no avail. I also just found out that all folders with large contents take a very long time to open, even on my native drive.

 

I went through every drive and reset folder attributes and now all large folders open up quickly again. I suppose the folder attributes database had gotten to large or corrupted in some way and perhaps was confusing the crap out of explorer which in turn caused the slow down...

coming up next on Fox: When Attributes Attack!

 

That's a good point, and one that you don't hear much about. Thanks.

 

Hey my External HD is very slow too..... Also when I boot up my system it takes several minutes (1-3minutes) extra to boot when my External is plugged in for some reason, and my external makes noise likes it running/writing data or something when I startup and its connected.

Can you explain a bit more how you fixed your slowness issues? or give me any advice on speeding mine up? Its a 200gig WD MyBook.....

Thanks.


also how did u do

that?

 

Go into Computer and right click on drive goto properties. Click the customize tab. Click restore default, apply. (one more thing I did was select "All items" as the template folder type and selected "also apply to subfolders"- don't know if it helped but worth a shot) Also, go into general tab and unselect "index this drive". Do this for every drive except OS drive. Now, go into control panel and enter indexing options, click advanced and click restore defaults, then click rebuild. click ok. You should only have users and start menu in the indexing list. Go back into drive properties and make sure the changes are still there. Restart computer.