Digital BW, The Print

Hi,
I wonder if anyone can help me with a problem.

Contrary to logic, my computer slows down when I have an external 750GB archived images hard drive switched on. (The disc also has a scratch partition for Photoshop. I use a laptop - but otherwise, funds permitting, would have a RAID scratch array.)

The thing is, when I switch on this external drive, the internal hard drive spins like mad for ages - half an hour? Ages, anyway. And the computer becomes impossibly slow.

I thought it was McAfee doing a scan this morning (which it was doing), so I turned off the scan, but still the hard drive was going nuts for half an hour or so.

So, power management issues aside, I leave my four external hard drives turned off unless I need them for something.

Can anyone suggest a reason why this might be happening?

thanks,
Richard
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www.richardsmallfield.com