Videos runs very sluggish when on my external hard drive

[Samelson03]

I'm not too sure where this post belongs, so i figured i'd just put it in the "Macbook" section. When I try to play a video either on VLC or Quicktime, it's very sluggish. It runs perfectly when I drag the file to my desktop and play it from there. But, I don't want to have to do this every time I want to watch something. Anyone ever experience anything like this?

 

[redbotsoftware]

This is very common, if you are using USB to connect, even 2.0 is limited in speed. When you play high data rate movies, it may not keep up. I would suggest getting a firewire connection.
USB was really made for connecting printers mice and keyboards. Even though they say 480 mb/s, it's only theoretical. Firewire 400 still beats it hands down.