I have a external Hdd in a nextar 3 case that takes 5-15 sec to spin up when accessed.

It had a samsung 32bit cache 1tb drive in it and is connected to my Mac via USB. Formatted in Mac format.

I used to have it on my pc formated in ntfs via eSata and had the same problem

The main problem is that it freezes the whole computer while it waits to spin up.

Does this sound like a fault with the external case ( it is about 5 years old) or with the Hdd ( under 1 year old )