[brazen1]

Your 2 cents makes sense. Why can't/isn't the metadata reference extended to the db as in case 1? Why should the file system query for path info when the data that needs to be read could be contained in the db? Sort of negates the whole need for a cache in the 1st place if it's going to do a confirm reference by calling up the source to read.

The only examples I could think of is for those that do not permanently populate source folders with metadata and/or those that only have one drive. Sort of screws the rest of us.....

With extrafanart enabled it will definitely spin up your disks, otherwise, as long as the images are in the texture cache, I guess it won't but I'm not sure.
There's a tool called Texture Cache Maintenance Utility. You might want to run that one to have all images pre-cached into the texture cache so it won't have to read your disks to grab the image at first access.
Just an idea. Might work.

After all you contribute for us? It's the least I could do. Ready when you are.

Well, please first test the texture cache tip. If that doesn't help we will do some debugging.

I was using the utility since it was introduced. I stopped using it when I switched to this skin because it deleted all my custom animated poster art. I haven't used it since. I understand animated artwork will rebuild now. Problem is, many of my custom artwork are not in the database. I've submitted them but they never made it and I don't know why.

Extrafanart is not enabled. Never has been. Nor is any other artwork. I only use posters. Nothing else, although I have ALL available artwork residing in the title folder. Just don't use them. Posters are cached. I can see them in the thumbnails folders along with actors, clearart, fanart, logo, etc.

I'll run the utility again just to double check but I'm fairly certain it won't make a difference now any more than it did in the past. If it does, I'll post the results. If not, you can PM me when convenient. I'll do it within 24hrs.
These are the commands I normally ran and in this order. Do you recommend I change anything?

C:\Python34\python.exe C:\texturecache.py update

C:\Python34\python.exe C:\texturecache.py P

C:\Python34\python.exe C:\texturecache.py R

C:\Python34\python.exe C:\texturecache.py c all