Scan of External Hard Drive on Macbook Kicks in

[leeschill]

Kinda odd with whats going on but here it goes:

When I perform a function on the Macbook it 'kicks in' and does a quick scan (more like startup) of the external hard drive. It spins (the mouse cursor) for about 3 seconds and then I can work like normal. Its like its trying to see if I'm going 'to do something' with the hard drive.
For example, I did a simple copy and paste function and when I went to 'paste' some text it did the above.

So has anyone experienced this before? It happens 1 out or 20 times probably.

What I have is below is my setup:

Newly converted PC to Mac guy.
Macbook 13"
External Monitor
Belkin Multi USB Port - two external drives, usb keyboard, printer are all connected.

(I know I should have gotten a Mac 17" - but anyway)

 

[scienide09]

It could be that Spotlight is indexing the external to see what changes have been made. This would explain why it happens when you connect the external, and also why it doesn't happen all of the time. Also, the indexing mostly occurs in the background and goes unnoticed, but every now and then Spotlight kicks into high gear and hogs resources temporarily.