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I've run into this before. My workstation has been having strange pauses lately, so I looked at the event logs, and spotted the occasional disk controller error on an external 1TB drive I use for weekly Acronis image backups. This drive is 4 1/2 years old, so it's not surprising.

Even though this drive is not normally accessed during normal operations, just during late night weekly imaging runs, Windows has always had issues with USB drives. Windows likes to constantly poll the drives all the time, and if you have a crankly USB drive then it will cause strange pauses.

I ran Spinrite level 4 on the drive and it didn't look too good. A lot of CRC errors and the SMART telltales were in the red, so it looks like it's wearing out.

I replaced it with a 1TB USB 3.0 Toshiba portable HDD. I have had VERY good luck with the Toshiba USB portable drives - between me and clients I must have 30 of these running constantly for backups, and haven't had one fail yet in 5 years. Sams Club has a good price on them all the time ($60 right now), bundled with a 16GB flash drive.

That eliminated the pauses.

So the takeaway is if you're having strange pauses or performance issues in Windows, try disconnecting any USB hard drives as part of your process of elimination.

Do you have a link for the Toshiba you recommend?

Most of the ones I'm using for the past 5 years are the Canvio 500GB models. I used them for a lot of clients for nightly backups (2 drives, swapping the drives out once a week) and carry a couple in my kit for making data backups and images during service calls.
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Ba ... B005J7YCHG

The 500GB models have been solid as a rock. Sams doesn't carry them anymore so now I buy the 1TB models the last couple of years:
http://www.samsclub.com/sams/1tb-port-v ... navAction=

It's $65 at Amazon without the bundled flash drive:
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Po ... B00DM5EVBY

My old drive, BTW, was a WDC Green 3.5" drive in a SATA enclosure. I bought the drive and enclosure separately. I would NEVER buy a retail desktop 3.5" USB drive because the drives in those things tend to be crap. Notice you can't find any of those that have more than a 1 year warranty. I've seen them fail too often. So I used to build my own.

However I don't think it's worth using 3.5" drives for USB drives anymore. The 2.5" portables are not much more expensive anymore, and the portables tend to be more rugged and handle the heat of a confined case better (after all, they are mainly laptop class drives in those things, which are designed to run without ventilation). 3.5" drives don't last long without ventilation, or a real good heat-sink design enclosure.

FlyingPenguin wrote:Most of the ones I'm using for the past 5 years are the Canvio 500GB models. I used them for a lot of clients for nightly backups (2 drives, swapping the drives out once a week) and carry a couple in my kit for making data backups and images during service calls.
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Ba ... B005J7YCHG

The 500GB models have been solid as a rock. Sams doesn't carry them anymore so now I buy the 1TB models the last couple of years:
http://www.samsclub.com/sams/1tb-port-v ... navAction=

It's $65 at Amazon without the bundled flash drive:
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Po ... B00DM5EVBY

The link from Amazon - if I select the 1TB option, it's only $55 versus $47. The 1TB option has some good reviews - 4½ stars, the same as the 500GB drive.

Ah, that's cool, they still sell the older Basics version in 1TB. The silver one (the one Sams sells now) is the version II slim model. Slimmer than the old one, but honestly that doesn't mean much when it comes to pocket drives.

The old design is solid as a rock. Well proven to me over 4 - 5 years. No issues yet with the newer version II slim model, but I haven't had them in service as long.

Well the polling has more to do with USB 2.0 than anything. USB 3.0 is better in that regard. Since USB 3.0 devices are backward compatible, there is really no reason for anyone to buy a USB 2.0 device these days.

For older hard drives that are capable of doing it anyways, you can always remove them and place them in an external enclosure. I know a bunch of them these days don't have that option but many still do. Seagate doesm't do that.

You can also get a 2TB external Seagate from Amazon for $90.

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-Po ... 00FRHTSK4/

It has a standard notebook hard drive inside with a SATA interface. It contains a Samsung Spinpoint M9T and is the only one available at 2TB that will fit into a standard laptop.