I have an Asus A7V333 mobo. I just got an external USB 2.0 case and put a HD in it. When WRITING to the HD, the transfer is quick and smooth, but when reading, it reads a little, then pauses for like 10 or 15 seconds, then reads a little again, and so on... The time it takes to read varies each time. It appears that it's worse with large files. So if I try to read a 25 meg file, it sometimes actually reads the whole thing, but when I try again, it will read say 75% then pause. Next time it will read less like 50% before pausing. If I try to read a 100 meg file it will pause about 6 times, and it will take from 2:45 to 3:15 compared to only 1:15 to write the file. When there's a pause, the drive light goes green and nothing happens. CPU isn't particularly active either, only like 5% when reading... Can't figure out what's happening during that pause--why doesn't it just read till it's done???