spinning beach balls in excel

[Rico]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

HI all, I am running leopard on an iMac3.06 with 4 GB ram. Excel was running ok, then I added a 1TB external drive (la Cie) via Firewire and now it seems like every time I copy even a small range in excel, I get a spinning ball for about 10 seconds until control is returned to me. This persists after shut down and reboot. Excel is not crashing, its just slow. Is it because of the new external drive?? Any suggestions? Thanks all. Cheers,

 

[CyberTaz]

I doubt that the drive, itself, is the problem unless you've configured it
as your startup drive, but it could be associated operations that are
contributing to the problem. For example, if the drive is formatted for
Journaling or if you have Time Machine set to back up to that drive it can
slow things down. You might check in those directions as well as any
settings for the drive [such as Energy Saving] which might be causing it to
sleep more often than necessary. These are a few of the processes that can
affect performance especially if the Excel files are stored on that drive.
Also, it might not hurt to run Disk Utility - Repair Disk Permissions on
your primary HD & make sure that OS X as well as Office are fully updated -
you didn't give your specific update levels of either.