I’ve recently setup my AppleTV using ATVflash and the USB-hack from the Wiki to use an external USB drive as my primary drive.
Everything seems to work fine, and iTunes is reporting the size of the external drive (a 500GB FreeAgent Desktop).
But, when playing back a TV-show stored on the drive, every 7-10 minutes the video stops for a few seconds then continues 
Now, the FreeAgent drive has a feature that it will automatically spin down after about 15 minutes of inactivity, which I thought would be great as it will put the drive to sleep when the AppleTV is not being used.
I’m wondering if it’s this feature that’s causing the problem, but it seems strange as the drive is playing back video, so since it’s not idle it shouldn’t spin down.
Does anybody have other suggestions as to what is causing this problem?
I just ordered a 1TB FreeAgent drive, and need to cancel the order if it’s the drive that’s the problem.
Everything else if working without problems, and when the drive is a sleep it wakes without problem when accessing the movies menu etc.
HELP! :o
Are these problems in NitoTV or just using the TV Show menu in the Apple TV? If you are running into problems with NitoTV you can try going into Settings under NitoTV and then change the Cache Time to 1 minute or 2 minutes and see if that changes anything.
It’s using the regular menu.
I tried some other shows and the lag was much less - only half a second 1 or 2 times during a 45 minute show.
So I’m not sure what is going on, but it doesn’t seem to be the sleep function that’s the problem.
I’ve tried investigating further, and it seems it IS the external drive that somehow re-seeks or whatever.
It does not seem to be related to the auto-sleep function of the drive, as it happens at random intervals - sometime 90 seconds sometimes 5 or 6 minutes.
It feels like the drive resets its heads or something, as I can hear the drive making a short noise when the lag happens.
This is really annoying, and I hope it can be fixed somehow.
I’m getting a new Freeagent drive tomorrow (a 1TB drive) and will see if the problem is there with this drive also - if it can’t be fixed I’ve basically spent $200 on nothing ($50 on ATV flash, $150 on the drive) as this behaviour makes it useless.
I have restored the AppleTV and only installed FTP-access and NitoTV - to have as clean a system as possible, but the problem is the same.
Any ideas as to what I can do to remedy it will be greatly appreciated.
FYI - i have now installed a new drive (a freeagent 1TB - new version) and it seems to work flawlessly 
You know that is very strange. I wonder what it is that makes some drives do that. I can’t believe that a manufacturer would make a drive slow down or stop temporarily every so many minutes. Oh well, at least you’ve fixed it. Glad to see your hunch was right.