computer is a little slow after using hard drive via firewire 800

[Sossity]

I notice that it gets a little sluggish all around after doing some encoding of flac to mp3 music files from an external hard drive via firewire 800. It works, but when I 1st turn on the drive, it takes about a minute or 2 to hear it being briefly indexed or the os crunching through it & for it to show up on my desktop & finder.

I am on a 2010 i7 macbook pro, 4gb of ram, snowleopard 10.6.3

 

[blueroom]

Try resetting your PRAM.

 

[Sossity]

Try resetting your PRAM.

I am new to macs, what is this & exactly how & where do I do this? I need step by step directions, I dont want to mess anything up I am taking online classes, so I need my system to work.

 

[blueroom]

Here you go.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379