What cheap-*** HD are you using ?
Choppy sound because of busy HD is the lamest excuse I heard sofar .

You can pick up a 40GB DeskStar 120GXP at IBM for 70 bucks !
And the 120GXP line is their top-model IDE disk .

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/desk/ds120gxp.htm

I have the 40GB model and SMART enabled .
I haven't had one single HD error yet .