[luis555]

I have an external harddrive that's been working fine up until yesterday, when i turn it on and open it up to see the files, the cpu usage all of a sudden spikes to 100% and stays there, i have this hd for saving movies only, and when i try to watch a movie, its really choppy and slow.
ive ran disk checks and defragmented it a few times but it still does it, i tried turning it off for a while and plugging it back in to a different usb port but its still the same.
any suggestions?

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One of your files is probably corrupted. If you have your computer setup to display Thumbnails while trying to view the files on your external, then that may be the reason why the CPU usage is spiking as you're browsing the drive. Change the view to "list" or "details" so windows doesn't have to cache all those files.

About locating the the corrupted file, I don't know how to do it without playing every file individually and seeing if your CPU starts spiking. When you play the corrupted one, you'll know.

[makai]

One of your files is probably corrupted. If you have your computer setup to display Thumbnails while trying to view the files on your external, then that may be the reason why the CPU usage is spiking as you're browsing the drive. Change the view to "list" or "details" so windows doesn't have to cache all those files.

About locating the the corrupted file, I don't know how to do it without playing every file individually and seeing if your CPU starts spiking. When you play the corrupted one, you'll know.

[luis555]

its not set to thumbnails, its set to details, same as always
and a very curious detail that i just found out is that the problem only happens if the folder is open, so if for example i open a movie from the hd and then close the folder, it'll run ok, but if the folder is open then the CPU usage spikes and the video slows down

[makai]

I still think one of your files is corrupted, although normally, only in thumbnail view will simply viewing the folder cause a problem.

Here's what you might try...

Open the drive and create new folder. Move the files one by one into the new folder. I'm thinking that once you move the problem file, the CPU usage will cease.

I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a try.

Edited by makai, 10 January 2009 - 04:04 AM.