Slowdown when USB drives are connected (although not accessed)

My Lenovo desktop (T7i) is a great machine - Core i9, 16GB dual-channel RAM, 512GB PCIe M.2, RTX 2080 Super. I do not do any gaming, just photo editing and video conversion along with the usual eMail and web surfing. Handbrake conversions are blazingly fast - sometimes >1000fps. I mention all this to note that, in almost every task, I am very happy with it.

However, there is one instance where it's slow: Windows Explorer is pokey sometimes and I've identified the culprit: USB-connected drives. Now, I want to stress that I know USB3-connected SATA3 spinning drives (I have a bunch in 4-bay enclosures) will never be fast during any operation but let's leave that to the side. Even if I am not accessing a USB-connected drive, just opening a new window in Explorer when a USB-connected drive is attached slows things down dramatically. As soon as I eject the USB drive, everything speeds up dramatically.

I am thinking that, in some manner, Windows is behaving very much the way my (now-discarded) Mac did - Open a Finder window and all the mounted drives would have to spin up before you could do anything substantive. Now my Windows machine does not seem to be anywhere near as bad as that (and I am using the same enclosures I did with my Mac) but I am leaning toward that conclusion.

I've set the USB controller to -not- spin down connected drives (but I think that choice may sometimes be the purview of the drive and not the PC's controller).

This is a small annoyance in the grand scheme of things and, once I shift over to all-SSD externals, perhaps this slowdown may be minimal. As I wrote earlier: If I keep my USB drives powered off, the pokey behavior isn't there. But might there be some settings I've overlooked? Appreciate advice.

Thanks!

Hi,

This thread should interest you. External Drive Issues