I recently got a Western Digital External 160GB harddrive for my computer. It as a 2.0 USB, fat32 interface. and is, generally, pretty fast. I happen to have a large collection of music (bought legally!) that cluttered up my internal computer harddrive. So smart as i am, i moved into onto my external drive in the hopes of a faster internal hardrive. After some frustration with Itunes and the external drive i manage to keep in on the external drive without having itunes copying it back over.

Now, i like racing in LFS while listening to music (Def Leppard, anyone?) so i boot up Itunes select a Def Leppard playlist and off we go in a race. What happens next caused not only, me to crash, but several others aswell. Somehow LFS and my entire computer lags!! whenever itunes changes to a new track. It never did that when i had it on my internal drive.

Too bad i thought at first, but i wasn't giving up. So i tried to give Winamp a go. went good at first but same prop. lagging whenever the player changes to a new track.

What on earth should i do?? Any help?

i believe external drives stop running when they dont need to to conserve energy, all its doing is its starting up searching for the new song, if you were running it all on one harddrive, then it shouldnt have that problem (i dont know anything at all about external harddrives so..) but it kinda makes sense if its external.. all computers will 'lag' up even internal HD's if you try to start something up quick if its been in a sleep type mode for a while, its just the HD starting up again, and i guess its just putting the song into the ram

thanks for the reply, and now that i think about it, i know you're right.

*goes to harddrive*
"sorry i yelled at you and threw you across the room"
*goes back to comp*

But getting an even faster HD wont help?

not to sure.. lol surprised none of the smart people came in here to say anything, like i said i dont know much about computers anymore, my guess would be yes, but i know for a fact there is a whole lot more to something than just being better or worse so.. dunno

Winamp is similar, it causes LFS to lag a bit (and RBR to lag hugely) if you have "scroll song title in taskbar" turned on.

Quote from Phill :

But getting an even faster HD wont help?

I don't see that helping at all. I listen to music through the network (from my storage junker PC), and it is the same as listening to music on my current PC's harddrive.

It is Winamp period that will make some games run slow probably. It is just using resources from your sound card, and put that together with a game that uses your soundcard just as much... seems logical that could be why. But I'll ask Tag from Winamp what might be the reason

Ahhh here we go. I asked Tag about how Winamp uses some resources, and this is what you do to fix it --- "wont steal GAME cycles this way"

-Goto Input Plugins
-Choose to configure the MPEG Decoder Plugin
-Change the 'Decode Thread Priority' to 'Normal' (Default is Highest)

IF that doesn't work, you basically just set the priority for Winamp lower than it normally is. But that little fix is what you can try.

EDIT: OH, as for the iTunes user, sorry, dunno what to do there, iTunes is not as flexible as Winamp

u can also watch your external hdd while track changes, if it's not restarting due to power conservation, then it's maybee to small interconntion datarates of your (usb?) hdd to computer hook-up method.

take usb 1.0 for example, lousy datarates possible.
so if your drive-led is just shining and suddenly stoppes to shine and at the same time the next song starts, it's just transmitting the new song to your pc...

Both Itunes and Wimp are hogs. Try something lighter, like QCD or even QMP.

http://www.quinnware.com/index.php

Or maybe it's Def Leppard.

The problem is neither winAmp nor ITunes...
The problem is indeed (as mentioned) the power management working on the harddrive... It's a common problem, and can only be (partially) fixed by turning off ALL power management in both Windows and the BIOS. If it doesn't work then, all you can do is copy the music back to the internal drive.

Quote from TagForce :

The problem is neither winAmp nor ITunes...
The problem is indeed (as mentioned) the power management working on the harddrive... It's a common problem, and can only be (partially) fixed by turning off ALL power management in both Windows and the BIOS. If it doesn't work then, all you can do is copy the music back to the internal drive.

I stand corrected.

I tried setting the priority of Winamp a bit lower, so now the music blips, but LFS dont! :yeahaa:

Thanks for the infomative replies! hope to ask you again... soon!