My Seagate 7,200RPM sys drive died recently and I replaced it with a WD Green. I was expecting a tiny loss in responsiveness (though most on here say it doesn't really cause any noticeable difference) but I'm seeing lag of 10+ seconds sometimes. The thing is, it's not only on first access - I can be cycling through photos absolutely fine and then it freezes after about 20 photos (2MB JPGs from my DSLR). It will take 10-20 seconds before Windows 7 will start responding again.

I'm on GbLAN and sustained transfer rates still seem good, though it takes a while to get going and seems to pause every so often after a while. With the Seagate as the sys drive I never noticed any real lag or pauses ever. The other drive is a 7,200RPM Seagate and both drives are healthy according to Home Server SMART.

Is it an Advanced Format drive? http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/12 ... me-server/

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Alex Kuretz
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Thanks for the reply. I was aware that an AF drive can cause conflicts but I thought it was just a case of the drive would work or wouldn't work! I'll digest this article.

That article mentions also that WD green drives park their heads after 8 seconds. Mine's a Seagate green drive and I don't see any useful app to change this setting unlike with WD.

Do you think it's more likely to be the head parking or AF or both? I grudge having to do a rebuild yet again for this thing to disable AF. I think it's time I got rid...