I’ve just done a bit of searching around and it may be my RAID array causing the conflict with iTunes/Quicktime on my Vista machine. A report at Tweaktown.com suggests that playing a QuickTime file on a Vista machine with a RAID array of SATA disks may cause a problem that makes it seem as if a drive is failing.

The problem has to do with the way that iTunes/Quicktime accesses the hard drive when doing multiple simultaneous read/writes to/from the array.  And, in hindsight, this is presumably why mp4/QuickTime files play OK from a non-RAID external hard drive. It would also explain why, about a month ago, I had a major system crash while trying to watch a QuickTime file - luckily I managed to restore Vista to a previously known good configuration! But it was touch and go for a while.

I think the problem is more to do with QuickTime rather than iTunes as music files seem to play perfectly well (although I guess the mini-freeze when trying to add album artwork to an mp3 may have something to do with the read/write to the RAID array?)

So who’s fault is it Apple, Intel or Microsoft?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 3:30 pm and is filed under MS/vista, news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 3 Comments