Interesting. It looks like the drives are always spun up (the hijack option set to 60 seconds), and that it did seem to help a bit. When I heard the audio glitch, it seemed a bit improved. There also was the W icon version, so the audio thread needed input. Now, even without glitching I would see that W appear, but only very briefly and without any glitch. During a glitch, the W stays on for a longer period of time (the length of the glitch). Still no drive errors or anything - I will try the reservecache option next.