Cubase 7.5 spinning secondary hard drive

Hi there,

Had a bit of a search for this one without finding any related results, so hoping someone on here can help with the following…

To optimise performance, I have Cubase 7.5 installed on a Samsung 840 Pro SSD which I use as my primary system drive along with Windows 8.1 64bit, my instrument plugins and all audio drivers etc. I run all active projects off the same drive too.

The above is only 120GB, so I have a secondary 700GB conventional spinning disk hard drive that I use for everything else that’s not a system programme or file/resource that Cubase uses e.g. completed Cubase projects, my mp3 library, pictures etc. etc.

For some reason - and although it shouldn’t need to access anything from it - Cubase regularly starts up the secondary drive. This most noticeably happens when a part’s selected on a track and I then click elsewhere on the project - you can hear the secondary drive start spinning and, as this takes a split second as it’s been stationary, Cubase’s performance load peaks and the project stutters.

This also sometimes happens during playback and recording, disrupting my workflow, and has got to be quite annoying. I’d be most grateful if anyone has any ideas how to fix it. I’ve considered changing the secondary hard drive settings so that this stays spinning for longer to prevent the start-up delays, however Cubase really shouldn’t be accessing this hard drive at all, so I would rather solve the root of the problem.

My computer’s a Scan pro audio machine with 16GB of RAM and a i7-4700 2.4GHz Intel CPU. I’m also using a Steinberg UR28M external sound card and a Motu micro lite midi interface.

Many thanks in advance.

Phil