Hello

I have a dell latitude e4300 laptop, windows vista, since I started using WD MyBook 500gb via ESata connection (built in in the laptops connectors) my computer started hanging for brief 1-2 second periods every 1-2 minutes when the esata drive is not connected.

I have tried to trace this problem to a specific application that may be trying to access the drive when its not connected but had no luck so far using the resource monitor, also i have rolled out heating issues that might be laptop fan related, these hangs only occur whenever that ESata drive is disconnected. i am using the drive as backup.

I have also installed avast pro and spy bot search and destroy for threat analysis and have come up with no results.

my best guess is that some application or service maybe indexing is trying to access the external esata drive even when its not connected, oh and shutting down the computer and turning it back on doesn't help.

how do i trace the source of the problem and find find out / fix what's causing it?

Try DiskMon or Process Monitor or PsTools.

Sysinternals File and Disk Utilities:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 45046.aspx

yeah, i use Process explorer you might find the culprit that is trying to access the drive , mybey look for something that shoots up to 100% or High CPU usage using Process explorer