Slow external HD?

[carodz]

I've got a fairly new PC running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, which came pre-loaded when I bought the PC, and it seems like it hates my external HD. I've got web design work, photos, music, and school assignments stored on this HD, and it seems any time I save something I'm working on, the program I'm saving through freezes for a while (I get the "Not Responding" added to the top of the window for a bit while it tries to save).

It's happened with basically any program that tries to save a document onto that drive, be it Word, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc. The last incident resulted in a complete BSOD and I lost about an hour's worth of work (MS Word was kind enough not to recover it for me).

The HD is a 500GB Seagate Portable USB drive, I'm pretty sure it's this one as I can't find the original packaging. The drive is shared over a secure home network between my computer and a laptop running Windows Vista, but the problem seems to be plaguing only the PC which the drive is actually attached to (the one running Windows 7).

I hope I've provided enough information for someone to offer some solution, as it's bothered me for a while now and finally resulted in a complete crash of the system and loss of work, rather than simply being annoying and slow.

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide me with.

 

[TVeblen]

Hello carodz. Welcome to the forum.

A few questions for you:

• How do you have this drive connected: USB from external directly into the W7 Desktop?
• Are you using the front panel (case) USB ports?
• Have you tried using one of the the rear USB ports, the ones connected directly to the motherboard?
• Did the Seagate external drive come with a CD with diagnostic tools? Have you tested the drive?
• Do you have any Network Drives mapped in Windows Explorer?

You say the Vista laptop can save files onto the drive without problem. Is that with the drive connected via USB directly to the laptop? Or over the network, through the W7 desktop with the drive attached? Is this a wired or wireless network?

Restart your computer into Safe Mode and see if you can save files faster from there.

Check your manufacturer's website and see if they have any driver updates for chipset or "host controller" (HP) that are newer than what you have on there now.

Can you post the crash dump files as per here: http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

Edit: And filling in your "My System Specs" (lower left corner of your post) will help everyone who reads this.