Playing music off a USB Disk

I have a Maxtor Basics 500GB USB2 external hard disk, which has a two into one USB cable, so uses two USB ports, 5400rpm SATA and has a data transfer rate of 480Mbps. I'm on Vista 64 bit (I have no choice over OS, it's a work laptop).

http://www.pc-tronics.co.uk/maxtor-b...sb20-900-p.asp

I have 12GB of music is on it, but after 5-10 minutes playing music it stops and Media Player hangs. I've tried Songbird as well and it's the same problem. Whilst it is hung and the music stopped, I can go into Windows Explorer and browse the drive no problem, no apparent performance issues, but have to unplug the drive and let the player throw an file not found type error, and plug it back in before starting the music.

I also have all my ISO's on it and never have a problem if I want to burn 4GB of data to a DVD, directly from the USB drive. Never have a problem copying large files either.

This never used to happen, and the only thing I'm aware of is I moved house which of course involved unplugging everything, and plugging back in, including a new monitor which increased the number of USB hubs I have daisy-chained. So the setup now is-

Laptop on docking station that has a four port USB hub. Into this I have Printer, new USB hub on the new monitor, and the two ports for the USB drive that is causing problems. This has worked fine before when plugged into the docking station. Then off the two port hub on the monitor I have the keyboard and webcam. The keyboard then has a two port hub into which is plugged the mouse, leaving me with one spare port on the keyboard, and four spare ports on the laptop itself, which I don't want to plug anything permanent into because that defeats the object of having a docking station.

I don't even know if the daisy chain of USB hubs is causing the problem, I have no problem with the operation of any other USB devices, and if I unplug the USB disk from the docking station and stick it directly into two of the spare ports on the laptop itself, it still does the same thing. I haven't yet tried it with the laptop not connected to the docking station.

I don't have the free space on the laptop to put the music there without filling my internal HDD.

Like I say it used to work fine and the USB drive speed should be more than capable. Any ideas what the problem could be?

[andrewsmith]

U tired running it direct from a USB port? I'm guessing its a Machine powered unit.

The daisy chain could be the cause as it is trying to distribute 500 or a 1000 mA over a lot of ports. Might be worth buying a powered hub then chaining off that.

You could try booting the laptop of a Linux live cd to see if the problem only occurs in Windows.

is it always on the same song?
could be a corrupted file that is borked.

Your daisy chain does sound a little unstable, but i'm guesing the docking station has it's own power cable so should be ok, but i'd refrain from using anything like the maxtor off anything other than the docking station itself or the laptop directly simply due to power requirements.
FYI the 2-1 usb cables are there so that 1 gives a clean 5v line sometimes you will find this is not needed as some systems will give enough power straight from the usb port.

Originally Posted by andrewsmith

U tired running it direct from a USB port? I'm guessing its a Machine powered unit.

The daisy chain could be the cause as it is trying to distribute 500 or a 1000 mA over a lot of ports. Might be worth buying a powered hub then chaining off that.

Originally Posted by -Ralph-

if I unplug the USB disk from the docking station and stick it directly into two of the spare ports on the laptop itself, it still does the same thing. I haven't yet tried it with the laptop not connected to the docking station.

It's plugged into the docking station which is a powered hub, plugged into the laptop directly it does the same thing. I'd hope the monitor is a powered hub too, but maybe not, the keyboard is definately not. What I haven't tried yet is having the laptop undocked so there are no USB hubs connected, only the Maxtor drive.

Originally Posted by wyrdness

You could try booting the laptop of a Linux live cd to see if the problem only occurs in Windows.

I have a USB drive with Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop installed, will boot off that and try it tonight. Can't try it during the day as I have work to do and need my email open under the Vista build. At least that will tell me if it's software or hardware.

Originally Posted by collis

is it always on the same song?
could be a corrupted file that is borked.

Nope, could be any song.

Cant you just use vinyl?
Not helping am i?

Originally Posted by specialone

Cant you just use vinyl?
Not helping am i?

I always though Col was an 8-Track sort of guy.

Well finally got to trying it on Ubuntu it works fine, so looks like the problem is Windoze (no surprises there then). Getting upgraded to Win 7 soon so I'll just live with it until then. Thanks for all the help.

[andrewsmith]

Not surprised there mate!!!

7 64 bit?

Originally Posted by andrewsmith

Not surprised there mate!!!

7 64 bit?

Yep, I regularly run 64bit W2008 VM's in VMware workstation so need a 64bit OS.