Question External hard disk slow access to audio files.

[Magnus43]

I have a problem with slow access to my audio files on an external drive.
I have about 16000 audio files on it (FLAC and MP3) occupying about 260GB. When playing a select file it typically stops playing after anywhere from 5 sec to 30 sec. It then pauses for a very long time and then continue playing agan for a short while. Also, when right clicking on a file to get to "properties" the PC may (but not always) spin for a very long time before it allow me to open the "properties" information. Same happens often when attempting to open the "Edit ID Tag".

I have looked all over to try and find some explanation for this behaviour but have not found anything. I would welcome any tips on how to remedy this problem.

My equipment:

• Thinkpad Yoga 2nd Gen. Signature Edition with 16GB RAM running Win 10/64, latest update. 500GB SSD drive with 125GB occupied.
• External Hard disk is 500GB Maxone Ultraslim 2.5" USB 3.0.

 

[Lutfij]

Tips? Well, for one, try and not run any media off the external drive while it's connected to the laptop. If anything, I'd ask you to see if copying over the audio files and playing back from your laptop changes your experience.

If the files play without a hitch on your laptop(after copying), then the external drive is on it's way out. To note, do you have more than one partition on your external HDD?

 

[Magnus43]

The files seem to play fine when copied over to my laptop. However, I have now copied the same entire music library over to a brand new hard disk of the same exact type and I have the problems also with this. Either these disks are just bad quality OR there is something with the USB connection.