IrfanView: sometimes very slow loading

On Mon, 07 Sep 2015 13:03:03 -0400, nospam
wrote:

your backup app is very broken.

there is *no* reason why a sleeping hard drive should cause *any* app
to fail, other than it's a buggy piece of ****.

Well, that's true, but his argument that the drive took too long to
wake up makes a little sense, as long as it was way too long. I also
use Easeus with external drives, and one day I reassigned the drive
letters without changing the path in Easeus. It's pretty much the same
thing, it couldn't find the drives, and the backup failed after
stalling for a very long time. I don't know if I'd call Easeus buggy,
but it does seem to me to be poorly written. Changing the path is
unnecessarily difficult. But it was cheap...

The thing is, the whole post you replied to had nothing to do with the
original complaint. The photo he was trying to open is not on an
external drive. I tried to tell him that the he caught the computer
doing something else when he tried to open that photo, but the
computer was busy, and apparently busy doing something else on that
external drive. Like indexing, the bane of all poorly spec'd XP PC's.

In article , Bill W
wrote:

your backup app is very broken.

there is *no* reason why a sleeping hard drive should cause *any* app
to fail, other than it's a buggy piece of ****.

Well, that's true, but his argument that the drive took too long to
wake up makes a little sense, as long as it was way too long. I also
use Easeus with external drives, and one day I reassigned the drive
letters without changing the path in Easeus. It's pretty much the same
thing, it couldn't find the drives, and the backup failed after
stalling for a very long time. I don't know if I'd call Easeus buggy,
but it does seem to me to be poorly written. Changing the path is
unnecessarily difficult. But it was cheap...

you changed the drive letter but didn't update the app and wonder why
things didn't work? really?

anyway, an app should not care about path names and certainly not
users, but windows is far too reliant on that, so much so that a lot of
things break in normal use scenarios.

The thing is, the whole post you replied to had nothing to do with the
original complaint. The photo he was trying to open is not on an
external drive.

it's irrelevant where the photo is.

typically, apps that rely on the file system need to enumerate all hard
drives to detect changes, which means that idle drives will spin up.

apps that have moved beyond the file system don't have that problem.

I tried to tell him that the he caught the computer
doing something else when he tried to open that photo, but the
computer was busy, and apparently busy doing something else on that
external drive. Like indexing, the bane of all poorly spec'd XP PC's.

indexing should be a low priority process but even if not, it should
not cause anything close to a 10-15 sec delay.

As VanguardLH indicated, it's almost certainly
shutting off after a period of inactivity. When you
access it, it then has to start up again. That's
a good thing, unless you use that disk constantly.

I don't use external hard disks, but I do use
two internally and set them in the Power Options
to shut off after 20 minutes of inactivity. That
saves on wear and tear with the second disk,
which I often don't use as much.

On Mon, 07 Sep 2015 14:45:34 -0400, nospam
wrote:

you changed the drive letter but didn't update the app and wonder why
things didn't work? really?

Well no, once I saw what I had done.

In article , Bill W
wrote:

you changed the drive letter but didn't update the app and wonder why
things didn't work? really?

Well no, once I saw what I had done.

as i said before the app is too reliant on paths. that shouldn't have
mattered, but unfortunately, it does.

Bill W wrote:

On Mon, 07 Sep 2015 14:00:26 +0100, Terry Pinnell
wrote:

This occurs usually at the start of a session or after a long gap. I
double-click a JPG in Explorer and instead of loading with the usual
speed that's one of IrfanView's impressive features, it takes 10-15
secs. During this time the LED flashes on one of my external WD hard
drives.

After that, for subsequent JPGs, it's back to normal - until hours
later when it happens again. It's as if the WD unit goes to sleep and
IV has to wake it up for some reason - even though the JPG is not on
that drive.

I'm using the latest version, 4.4.0 (32 bit) on an XP PC.

Anyone seen anything similar or have any insight into the likely cause
- and a suggested possible fix please?

You're likely catching your computer when it's doing something else,
and you had to wait for it to finish. That external drive was probably
active before you clicked on the photo - just a coincidence.

File indexing was always one of the big culprits with XP, but there's
many other thing it could be doing.

Thanks, but I don't really follow that. When the WD 2TB drive is
active, its LED always flashes. The occasional very slow opening of a
double-clicked JPG in IrfanView arises when the drive is not already
flashing, i.e. not already active.

I'm almost sure it's something to do with its firmware putting it to
sleep. (Or software. I recall I could not avoid it installing some
unwanted stuff. This was a few years ago so I'm vague.)

The fact that this long delay only arises hours after the last JPG
opening reinforces my opinion about the sleeping.

When I open a JPG the WD flashes:

1. For 10-15 s (only after a long gap), before IV displays the JPG.

2. For 1 s or less, if another JPG is opened shortly after the above
first attempt eventually succeeds.

3. Not at all. This is the state for a long period after the above.
JPGs open immediately, with no apparent involvement of the WD HD.
Which is what I would *always* expect.

Why does the WD drive get into the equation at all? As you've reminded
some other posters (who seem to have missed that crucial point), the
JPGs are not on this drive.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Guy wrote:

Terry Pinnell wrote:

I double-click a JPG in Explorer and instead of loading with the
usual speed that's one of IrfanView's impressive features, it
takes 10-15 secs. During this time the LED flashes on one of my
external WD hard drives.

After that, for subsequent JPGs, it's back to normal - until hours
later when it happens again. It's as if the WD unit goes to sleep
and IV has to wake it up for some reason - even though the JPG is
not on that drive.

I'm using the latest version, 4.4.0 (32 bit) on an XP PC.

Anyone seen anything similar or have any insight into the likely
cause - and a suggested possible fix please?



I do not see that behaviour.

If you can duplicate the condition, I suggest monitoring the activity
with Process Monitor -- www.sysinternals.com -- to see what process
may be accessing the external HDD.

Thanks, good idea. I'll have to wait for the WD unit to go to sleep
first, open ProcMon, then d-click a JPG. I *think* its steady LED goes
off when its asleep, but I look at it so rarely (its main activity is
overnight, doing backups) that I'm unsure.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

In article , Terry Pinnell
wrote:

I'm almost sure it's something to do with its firmware putting it to
sleep. (Or software. I recall I could not avoid it installing some
unwanted stuff. This was a few years ago so I'm vague.)

your observation is correct. it's spinning down when idle.

Why does the WD drive get into the equation at all? As you've reminded
some other posters (who seem to have missed that crucial point), the
JPGs are not on this drive.

where the jpeg is makes no difference.

the app could be enumerating all drives because it doesn't know which
photos you will be viewing or working with. it may also be a limitation
of windows where any drive access causes all drives to spin up.

On Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:29:20 +0100, Terry Pinnell
wrote:

Bill W wrote:

On Mon, 07 Sep 2015 14:00:26 +0100, Terry Pinnell
wrote:

This occurs usually at the start of a session or after a long gap. I
double-click a JPG in Explorer and instead of loading with the usual
speed that's one of IrfanView's impressive features, it takes 10-15
secs. During this time the LED flashes on one of my external WD hard
drives.

After that, for subsequent JPGs, it's back to normal - until hours
later when it happens again. It's as if the WD unit goes to sleep and
IV has to wake it up for some reason - even though the JPG is not on
that drive.

I'm using the latest version, 4.4.0 (32 bit) on an XP PC.

Anyone seen anything similar or have any insight into the likely cause
- and a suggested possible fix please?

You're likely catching your computer when it's doing something else,
and you had to wait for it to finish. That external drive was probably
active before you clicked on the photo - just a coincidence.

File indexing was always one of the big culprits with XP, but there's
many other thing it could be doing.

Thanks, but I don't really follow that. When the WD 2TB drive is
active, its LED always flashes. The occasional very slow opening of a
double-clicked JPG in IrfanView arises when the drive is not already
flashing, i.e. not already active.

I'm almost sure it's something to do with its firmware putting it to
sleep. (Or software. I recall I could not avoid it installing some
unwanted stuff. This was a few years ago so I'm vague.)

The fact that this long delay only arises hours after the last JPG
opening reinforces my opinion about the sleeping.

When I open a JPG the WD flashes:

1. For 10-15 s (only after a long gap), before IV displays the JPG.

2. For 1 s or less, if another JPG is opened shortly after the above
first attempt eventually succeeds.

3. Not at all. This is the state for a long period after the above.
JPGs open immediately, with no apparent involvement of the WD HD.
Which is what I would *always* expect.

Why does the WD drive get into the equation at all? As you've reminded
some other posters (who seem to have missed that crucial point), the
JPGs are not on this drive.

Disconnect it, and see what happens. What do you use it for? It's
possible that IV is using it for something. And is this the only
program that this sort of thing happens with? I have 3 external drives
on one PC, and none of them wake up, or do anything, when I open any
files of any sort, unless the files are on that drive, of course.

Do you use backup software that is set to back up continuously, in
real time as files change? If so, that might be the issue. After long
inactivity on the PC, try opening any file with another app (not on
that drive), and see if that drive acts the same way, whether it
causes a delay or not.

And I assume that there are file preferences in IV. Maybe you set
something to use that drive. In fact, if you've disconnected and
reconnected any drives, the drive letters might have changed, but I'd
think you would have seen other problems related to that. (Drive
letters could also change just from rebooting the PC, under some
conditions.)

Anyway, disconnect the drive, and then try to duplicate the problem.
You might get an error message from some app that will lead you to the
problem.

Finally, as others have said, it's time to move on from XP, and that
PC that uses it. I'm not saying it has anything to do with your
problem, but you are going to end up with more and more issues as time
passes.

VanguardLH wrote:

Terry Pinnell wrote:

This occurs usually at the start of a session or after a long gap. I
double-click a JPG in Explorer and instead of loading with the usual
speed that's one of IrfanView's impressive features, it takes 10-15
secs. During this time the LED flashes on one of my external WD hard
drives.

After that, for subsequent JPGs, it's back to normal - until hours
later when it happens again. It's as if the WD unit goes to sleep and
IV has to wake it up for some reason - even though the JPG is not on
that drive.

I'm using the latest version, 4.4.0 (32 bit) on an XP PC.

Anyone seen anything similar or have any insight into the likely cause
- and a suggested possible fix please?

External HDDs do go to sleep. When is up to their firmware. For me,
the "green" USB-attached HDDs go to sleep too often and are too long to
wake. We had a Toshiba USB 1GB HDD that would prevent us from using
Acronis True Image (or Macrium Reflect or Easeus ToDo Backup so probably
all imaging backup programs). The backup would start okay but then hang
after an hour, or more. The backup program would wait for a write
operation to complete (they go in bunches), the external HDD would not
respond for a too long time, and the backup would hang waiting. We
could kill the backup and the USB HDD was usable but I could tell in
Explorer that I would occasionally catch it napping and it was slow to
start responding. And it napped too frequently.

I checked the power options did not spin down the drives. That didn't
help. The "green" feature of the drive's firmware would still make the
USB-attached HDD spin down too often and too long. Replacing the HDD
with a WD blue or black HDD solved the problem. Since it was a Toshiba
USB drive, it was probably a green Toshiba HDD (not a WD drive). WD has
their green drives, too, so I wouldn't bother using those. The green
drives are designed in their firmware to spin down often to reduce heat.
Most external cases have no active cooling (fan) and inadequate
ventilation, if any, or case mass and fins as a heatsink for passive
convection cooling. Green drives are also considered mobile drives so
spinning down often (and not coming up quick to avoid sporadic startups
when the drive itself was not actually addressed) saved power. The WD
blues don't spin as fast (5400 RPM) so not as responsive a drive but
under typical user deployment won't be noticed to be slower than the
hotter higher RPM (7200 RPM) WD black drives.

To get away from the too short idle spin down and too long spin up time
of green drives, and because you cannot alter their firmware, I get rid
of green drives. With a good enclosure, I don't have to be worried
about heat. In my setups, I'm not trying to squeeze every milliamp out
of a battery, especially since all but one of my USB-attached drives are
not USB powered or they could be USB powered but I keep them on an A/C
power source. I want continual and immediate access to the USB drives,
not sputtered access which can affect long-running programs that have
repeated but not necessarily constant writing.

You could check your power options to make sure drive spin-down is not
enabled. Set "turn off hard disk" to zero and check "USB selective
suspend" is disabled. You could edit the properties of the device to
disable "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" but
that's if you want other drives to spin down by having the option
enabled in your currently selected power options theme. However, that
will not affect the power saving algorithms in the drive's firmware. I
recall reading that some drives can use their own utility to change the
idle period for when they go to sleep. Not sure how that would help in
a mixed drive environment where some USB drives don't use that brand of
drive inside.

If you are trying to use USB power for the external HDD, you may have to
use 2 USB ports to get sufficient power rather than using just one port.
Drives wanting more power (during surge) than the USB port can handle
/should/ come with a Y-adapter USB cable. Not having a sufficient power
source could mean the drive takes too long to wake up and spin up.
Instead of using USB power, and if the external case allows an A/C power
source then go with the A/C adapter. If you are using a USB hub to
connect multiple USB drives, make sure it is a powered USB hub. A
passive one would be trying to distribute the power from a single USB
port to all drives connected to the passive hub.

If it is not a power issue to the external drive, about the only
solution I've heard of (other than replacing the HDD with a better one)
to get around the drive's firmware for its power saving mode is to use a
keep-alive utility. It repeatedly polls the drive or writes a dummy
file on the USB-attached HDD to keep it from sleeping (e.g.,
http://keepalivehd.codeplex.com/ or http://nosleephd.codeplex.com/).
Another solution would be to write a batch (.bat) file that writes a bit
of text to a file on the drive, like "echo hello d:\file.txt", and use
Task Scheduler to run the .bat file at periods shorter than the drive's
firmware idle period for when it activates its sleep mode. The in the
command overwrites the same file each time so the file will not grow.

Thanks, appreciate your thorough reply. Not sure all of it is entirely
relevant though. Buy as per my reply to Bill W, I think you're right
about the sleeping. However, as I said in that post, why should it be
accessed at all?

BTW, there seems no general consensus that sleeping is 'a good thing'.
Arguably it causes more wear than permanent spinning. Some external
drives make a feature of that. The one I've just ordered (as a
precaution), a Seagate Expansion 2 TB, appears to be one such example.

I also run my XP PC 24/7 except for holidays, partly for that same
reason but also to allow for extensive nightly backups and defragging.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK