External hard drive access slow from time to time in Win 7

[infobleep]

Hi there

Would anyone know what is causing the following issue and whether caused by Windows 7; VirtualBox; Snow Leopard or any combination of them?

I have a copy of VirtualBox which runs in Snow Leopard. I have a Windows 7 guest operating system installed. I am finding an issue when accessing networked hard drives and I don't know if it is a VirtualBox issue or a Windows 7 issue? I am finding when I go to access my list of hard drives and network hard drives, in for example a drop down menu, there is a 30 second period whilst Windows does something, before I can see the list and access them.

The external hard drives are all HFS+ and they are not always connected. They are shared via a host-only adaptor. Whilst accesing files on the drives is of course slower than if they were natively plugged in, the 30 second issue is in addition to that. Here's an example:

1. I go to open a document from recent documents, and 1 which I have moved;
2. Windows offers me the chance to locate it;
3. I click browse;
4. In the file window I click on the drop down list of hard drives and network drives;
5. Windows now spent 30 seconds doing something - what I don't know;
5. I have already accessed drives in the Windows Explorer file manager and also in Excel so why the additional wait now?
6. Once finished I can then see the list of drives and access them;
7. Every time I re-click on the drop down list it appears instantly without a 30 second wait;
8. I locate the file and open it. It opens slower but it doesn't take an additional 30 seconds before opening.

I am trying to figure out what is causing the 30 second period of activity.

I have another issue, which may or may not be related. I've noticed that whenever I access a document in Excel and attempt to make changes to it, be it delete text in cells using the clear contents function or something it, it takes a while before it does it. It's like Excel is pausing but I believe it must be doing something. As the document is linked on the HFS+ drive, is Excel pausing whilst it tries to read the HFS+ drive?

That also links to another issue. My backup folder for Excel is located on my my part of my HFS+ internal drive. If I put my computer sleep and then wake it up and carry on working in Excel I can work out any issues, expect this slowness. However if whatever reason Windows aborts and I restart it, I find that there is no backup Excel files. It's as if it wasn't saving them due to the computer having been put to sleep. However I've had no warning message saying it can't access the drive and I can access it myself to open files and work on them.

Kind regards

[rpmurray]

Try either or both of the answers here and see if that helps.

[infobleep]

Thanks for you reply rpmurray

I'll look into the recently used files list. However the second option to automatically search for networks is not listed in windows 7. So either Windows 7 doesn't allow you to stop this from happening or it doesn't do it.

I did a search on-line but couldn't find an answer. Everyone just wanted to go on about XP, expect I'm using Windows 7.

Kind regards