1TB External HDD - Audio Stuttering, constantly Seeking

[anotheraddict]

Ok, I've had this HDD for a little over a year, and aside from this, have never experienced any issues with it.

This is the model:
Seagate FreeAgent Desk: USB 2.0
http://tinyurl.com/mujkad

Basically when I'm playing music through Foobar2000(both FLAC files and MP3's) the music will begin to hang or stutter as I can hear the HDD loudly begin to seek, or read. This persists for some time, usually resulting in my stopping playback, and other times fixing itself shortly.
In an attempt to fix this issue, I've tried different USB ports, and also enabled write caching on the drive.

Oddly enough this doesn't seem to ever happen while watching movies over the drive, although I would only be watching say 1 TV show episode on the drive, vs hours of music, although separated by different tracks...

Just looking for any advice on where I could even start trying to fix this, yes I've defraged the drive, and checked for errors.

[anotheraddict]

I uploaded a video that shows the drive when it gets stuck like this, sound is low, I apologize

YouTube - 1TB External HDD - Audio Stuttering, constantly Seeking

[anotheraddict]

I'm desperate for help here, is there any disk optimizing tools I could use? or possibly even a diffrent filesystem? i'm stumped as to why it has suddenly degraded in performance so sharply

[GroundZero3]

When you checked the drive for errors did you run the seagate drive tools (not windows)? And I assume you are running NTFS correct? Do you have the latest chipset drivers installed? Did you install any driver updates from the windows update website? What do you have running in the background? Any antivirus software?

| Seagate

[GroundZero3]

PS you will probably get better support on the Seagate forum

FreeAgent Products - Seagate Community Forums

A thread you might want to check out: Common issues seen on this forum - check here firs... - Seagate Community Forums

[Steve R Jones]

If you copy a music file to the internal drive and play it from there - does the play better?

[anotheraddict]

I'll post on their forums also, thanks.

Playing the files from and internal HDD produces no issues.

I have Windows Security Essentials antivirus, and have completely updated my PC with all available updates through windows update.

[Steve R Jones]

Win Explorer->Look in the properties for the external drive. You should see a couple options. One is for quick removal - the other is for preformance.