I was hoping my transition from a 3.5 external drive to a 2.5 external drive was going to be without issue. I was wrong.

My 3.5 external drive plays everything fine. No music skipping issues in Mario. This is with WBFS, both Hermes v4 and Waninkoko rev17, and the latest USB Loader GX.

My 2.5 external drive has some lag/skipping issues, most notably in Mario with the music. Gameplay is otherwise normal. This is with WBFS, both Hermes v4 and Waninkoko rev17, and the latest USB Loader GX.

The 3.5 external is a 4-5 year old Seagate 300GB (so old that it is an IDE interface on the inside). The 2.5 external is a quite new Western Digital 640GB Elements Portable. My troubleshooting and my gut tell me that my new 2.5 external drive is the problem, though I can't explain why. Wouldn't a typical spindown issue cause the game to freeze entirely? And I thought the latest cIOS's had improved spindown issue protection. So what could the problem be?

edit: I would try testing a different USB cable with the 2.5 external, but it is a special small one that is different than the traditional USB cable.