Lost computer speed

Taking the advice from the Sonar x2 tutorials, I decided to add an external hard drive. I added a new 4 tb hard drive. I found that Sonar now needs about 2 seconds to process every single click I make where it never needed time before. I am getting sick of that little circlely thing swirling around.  I have both audio and project files being saved in the external hard drive. I am assuming that the delay is the info being saved or process to the hard drive.  Has anyone else had this issue? Is there a way to speed things up?
 
Thanks,
shark
 
Windows 7 professional ver 6.1/Service pack 1/ 8 gig ram/ 64 bit operating system/ 1 TB hard drive/ Intel Core Quad CPU Q9400@2.66 GHz/ 4 TB external hard drive /Sonar X3 studio(64 bit)/ M-Audio fast track ultra interface/ Some miscellaneous wires

Hi - I'm not sure which tutorials you were watching, but when most of us add an external drive, it is NOT used to store 'active projects', those that we are currently working on.
 
We use the external drives for backing up project folders, and some use them for placing some of their sample libraries there (I don't recommend placing sample libraries on an external drive, for performance reasons, but for some folks they just don't have enough room on their internal drives).
 
Do you have enough room on your internal drive(s) to keep your current projects there?
 
Please explain how many drives you currently have, and what kinds of things are on each one.
 
Thanks, 
 
Bob Bone
 

How fast is the external one - 5400, 7200 or 10 000 rpm? What brand? Western Digital (but manual says Hitachi)
This is all I could find for the speed:
USB 3.0 Interface
USB 3.0 supports data transfer rates up to 5 Gb/s. USB 3.0 is backward compatible
with USB 2.0. Connection to a USB 2.0 port transfers data at the port speed—up to
480 Mb/s
 
 
"I'm not sure which tutorials you were watching"
I downloaded the 50 video series from Cakewalk (SWA Complete Sonar x2, video #6 (totally worth the $20)).
 
 The person on the video talks about storage for the "Project Files" and makes the comment:
"and there will be some benefit here for using a different drive to your system drive"
So I assumed he was saying that an external drive was better for storing project files. I will have to change it back.
 
Do you have enough room on your internal drive(s) to keep your current projects there?
I have a total of 996GB on my internal C drive and I have 667GB of free space right now.

Two seconds is an eternity, and cannot be explained by drive or interface speed limitations of any modern external drive. Most people do not use an external drive because they are concerned that millisecond delays will affect real time audio streaming. If this were a problem with the read/write speed of the drive or interface, I would expect your audio would be massacred. I am assuming the interface is some kind of USB, and on a new 4TB drive it is presumably USB3, which should not produce a delay longer than milliseconds. If your external drive is set to spin down to save energy (either in the drive itself or the controller built into the external enclosure) that might explain a long delay, as it would need to spin up again to access data. Much less likely would be a very severe connection problem so that data has to be re-sent many times. Or the problem could be with how the OS itself is operating after you attach the drive. 
 
Does the problem go away when the external drive is not attached ie booted with the drive detached? Is it just Sonar or does every program you run show this problem?

Sanderxpander
A different drive to your system drive doesn't mean an external drive. Internally mounted drives are, as a rule, (a lot) faster than drives connected through USB or Firewire.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH. I get it. I only have a C drive it looks like. Rats.

Don't get rid of it - use it for backups.
 
Just go and buy a regular internal HDD for your projects - 7200 rpm or higher, no "green" versions - I've had great success with WD Caviar blacks