Dropout code 5 - disk reading

[jkoseattle]

Anyone who's been keeping score here knows the hassles I've been undergoing with the final work on my project. OneDrive, corrupted CWP files, crashes, etc. And here's yet another one:

I moved all my work off OneDrive and onto an external HD, and that has seemed to work well. However, after working just a minute, playback takes a long time to begin, maybe 5 seconds after space bar. Also, now that I am on the final mastering stage, I have the entire suite in a single audio-only project. No effects on anything, just an audio track for each instrument and sound effect, looks to be 80 tracks, with usually fewer than 30 ever playing simultaneously. And again, no FX and almost no envelopes. Yet.

But I am getting audio engine dropout repeatedly with code (5): "Disk reading overloaded and could not keep up with playback pump. Disk may be fragmented or too slow to read."

I do not want to defragment the drive with my whole project on it, and as the thing has gotten little use since I bought it, that seems unlikely and not worth the risk. Is there anything I can do about it or is it just plain too slow and that's that?

[John Vere]

Seems the solution is to transfer the project to a dependable brand new state of the art drive. 
And it is best if that is a drive that is installed in your computer. If this is a laptop you will then need external but one that has top specs and uses USB 3
 

Edited July 25 by John Vere

[Kurre]

If current hd is mechanical, a ssd will give better performance.

[Starship Krupa]

Your external drive may be transferring too slowly. Make sure it's USB3 and plugged into a USB3 port on your system.

[mettelus]

+1 to the above. Ideally you want your active project's data inside the machine you are working on (even on the C drive if you must). External drives (especially large USB 2 spinners) can have excessive seek times, especially when fragmented. When working with that many audio files, the drive needs to find each one, and may only be loading enough of each to fill the buffer, then repeating. If you have the option to get large sets of data off your internal drive (move to the external), that will be the best case. The contents of your "C:\Users\[username]\Downloads" could potentially be huge and can be moved. Contents of both "C:\Users\[userame]\AppData\Local\Temp" and "C:\Windows\Temp" may be huge if you have never purged them (you can also clean many files with Windows "Disk Cleanup" and selecting "Clean up system files" after choosing your C drive). There is a truckload of temporary files on the C drive that get put in place when apps are opened, but rarely get purged. Anything "in use" will not let you delete them, but the rest can go in both of those Temp directories.

Another option that may help (with slower drives), is to enable Read and Write Caching in CbB itself... Preferences->Audio->Sync and Caching (need "Advanced" at the bottom checked to see that option on the left). Typically, 512KB for both the wirte and read I/O buffers can help in that situation, but is also system dependent.

[Promidi]

Make sure the external driver is not going to sleep.  Some do this as a function of the drive itself an is independent of any Windows power saving functions.

Personally, I would just use internal drives for all project storage.