Brian's Mail list account via Groups.Io <bglists@...> wrote:

Off the top of my head I would say that if nvda needs access to a file and
the drive is so slow and caching so small that there is a delay then there
is going to be a delay no matter what you do. Best wolld be to make sure
thedrives do not go to sleep in the first place.

The drive sleeping is not relevant here. It's an example of behavior, not the whole point of the message.
The point is that while the app is unresponsive, NVDA is too. The whole computer is not unresponsive, just that one app. I've seen this happen with Skype sometimes too, but I can't nail down a specific instance right now since I don't use it very often.