I recently installed a 500GB Western Digital hard drive primarily to store photographs which I do not use frequently. What I am finding is that when I do need to retrieve a photo it can take up to a minute and sometimes longer to display. I can display the same size image from the hard drive on my laptop within a couple of seconds. Why might it take this long with the external drive? I am using Windows XP and the external drive is connected via a USB hub. I have also noticed that should I need to shut down the computer for whatever reason the start up time for Windows is incredibly long as I notice the blinking light on the external drive will be doing it's thing for 3 to 4 minutes before the Windows screen becomes active. I have no idea whether the two problems are related or not.

Many thanks for any advise on this situation.

Hi there isswindy,
Firstly, welcome to CompuForums. I hope that you can visit our forum often in the future and post - rather than just receiving our help and advice, and then never visiting again. We provide our help for free, and all we ask in return is that you participate in our forum and refer your friends, or consider a premium membership. Not returning once we have helped you is stealing from everyone who has helped you.

For your first problem, it looks like the drive is optimized for quick removal rather than performance. To rectify this, go to My Computer and right click the drive. Select Properties. Click the Hardware tab, and you should see the drives listed on your computer. Select your external hard drive again and select Properties. Go to the Policies tab, and make sure that the "Optimize for performance" option is selected.

For your second problem, it is likely that either Windows is scanning the drive for errors on the drive before it boots, or that your computer's BIOS is attempting to boot from it - probably the latter. You should be able to disable booting from USB devices in your computer's BIOS.

Finally, how old is the computer? If it doesn't have USB 2.0, then it will be very slow to access the drive. Also if the hub only has USB 1.0/1.1, then you won't get very fast disk access at all.

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Thanks,
Ash
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