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Sometimes when I click on a secondary HDD in windows explorer, explorer will freeze for a couple of seconds while the HDD will make a whiring noise before the HDD will open.

Another occurrence of this problem is when I'm watching videos from a secondary HDD, in the middle of the video, the video plays super slow and the audio still plays at the normal rate while the HDD makes the whiring noise. When it stops the video speeds up to sync up with the audio.

Is there any way to fix this? Or at least a reason for it?

System Specs


OS: Windows 7 64-bit
CPU: Athlon II X4 2.8GHz - 4 x 512KB L2 Cache
RAM: 4GB
HDDs: 4 x SATA 3.0GB/s 7200 RPM

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Well, with those hard drives the movie's bitrate definitely isn't the bottleneck. With your description of the hard drives starting then slowing down it sounds like an issue with the power profiles in Windows 7.

  • In Control Panel, navigate to power options and select change plan settings
  • From there, select change advanced power settings and expand the tree for the hard drive
  • Make sure it is set to never turn off

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You may also want to update the BIOS and chipset drivers to ensure your SATA controller is up to date.

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  • Why did this get two down votes? O_o It's exactly what I needed. Thank you Dec 1, 2009 at 0:08
  • You're very welcome!
    – user1931
    Dec 1, 2009 at 0:10
  • Ridiculous to downvote this. It's exactly what I was going to post, but I don't have Win7 and thus couldn't be sure the menu would be the same (and it's not).
    – JMD
    Dec 1, 2009 at 0:13
  • Make sure ya keep it off, superuser.com/questions/17228/is-turning-off-hard-disks-harmful
    – bobobobo
    Dec 1, 2009 at 2:54

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