Premiere Suddenly Freezing When Opening Projects On External Drives

[warrenc36745406]

I edit with two computers, a laptop and a desktop. I edit off of external drives on both just fine for the most part, until the other day.

When opening projects on external drives on my desktop Premiere becomes unworkably slow and intermittently stops responding. Media on the timeline gives me the Media Pending screen, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes indefinitely. The same media in the Project window shows the Media Offline question mark, again sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes indefinitely.

Exports(when I get that far) exhibit random bugs like static noise instead of music at certain points in the video.

Just looking for any additional troubleshooting tips as I can't find anyone who has had this exact problem.

This issue doesn't happen at all on my laptop. Projects saved on my desktop's internal drives seem fine.

Desktop specs:

19-9900K

RTX2070

32GB RAM

1TB Samsung SSD

2 x 2TB WD HDD

About 4 years old.

What I've tried:

Clearing the Media Cache

Updating Graphics Drivers

Updating Premiere

Reseating RAM

Air dusting internal components

Changing Mercury Playback to Software only, then back to GPU Acceleration

Interacting with clips on the timeline to see if it kick starts Premiere into recognising the media

Relinking all the media in my footage bin, saving, and restarting(It just reverts back to the way it was, also relinking is incredibly slow) 

Closing all timelines and bins, saving, and restarting(No effect)

The desktop seems to have no other issues with speed. Games and other software all run fine.

If anyone has any tips or other things I could try I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks. 

[Peru Bob]

How are the external hard drives connected?

[warrenc36745406]

USB, Type A(Computer) to Type C(Drive).

I've tried a few different USB ports of different generations on my desktop, as well as a few different cables.

[Peru Bob]

If USB 2.0, that may cause issues.

[warrenc36745406]

My desktop has both 2.0 and 3.0 ports, I've tried both with the same result. I've also tried a fresh install of Premiere now, to no avail. I'll try pick up a newer USB cable just on the off chance that it works.

[Peru Bob]

Are the drives self powered or do they rely on USB power?

If USB powered, it could be that one computer is not able to supply enough reliable power to the drive.

[warrenc36745406]

Interesting. I'll see about diagnosing any potential PSU issues with the desktop. The drives rely on USB power from the computer. They seem to work fine even when the laptop is running off of battery power though. I would have thought the desktop would provide more than enough

[Peru Bob]

If a USB power issue, something like this might help:

https://www.amazon.com/HIGHROCK-Enhancer-Female-Charge-Extension/dp/B00NIGO4NM/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=u...