Hard Drive Access Is Slow

[maxxorz]

So, I checked the forum, but couldn't find a thread that really answers this. It may just be a stupid question.

I my current hardware set up, I have four drives. My boot drive is a 160GB SSD, I have two 600GB Velociraptors in a striping configuration, and I have a 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT with 7200 RPM.

Sometimes, when I try to access the Seagate, my computer has to wait for it to load up. The only thing I keep on it is my Documents. The raided velociraptors are for programs, and the SSD is for my OS.

I experience this not only through Windows Explorer, where I'll click on the hard drive, and a green loading bar will appear at the top, but in my web browser as well, when I want to save a file (I use a Windows specific version of Firefox called PaleMoon).

What I'm wondering is, am I doing something wrong to cause this sort of load time, or is it just the nature of the hardware?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Hawkeye22]

You didn't mention your OS. Take a look at your power settings. It's probably spinning the drives down when idle. It takes a few seconds for the drive to come back up to speed before it can be read or written to. The drive settings are kind of buried in the win 7 power settings so you may have to dig for it. Set the drives to never spin down.

 

[maxxorz]

Windows 7. Sorry about that.

I went in to the power settings, did advanced power settings, expanded Hard disk, there was a "Turn off hard disk after" setting, and I set it to never. I'll see if this works. Thank you for your advice!

 

[maxxorz]

Best answer selected by maxxorz.