[Nergol]

So I have a 5400RPM 1TB WD drive in the optical drive slot in my MBP via an OWC Data Doubler. I accept that it's kind of a slow drive (which doesn't matter that much, since it's my bulk storage drive and not my boot drive), and it stutters a bit when I'm playing 60fps video from it, but otherwise it's fine.

So I ran Blackmagic Disk Speed Test on it, and found both read and write speeds hovering at around 75MB/sec. So my question is: is that about right, or is it slow for what I should be getting from this drive?

Thanks.

[Waragainstsleep]

From memory, that seems about right for a SATA platter HDD.

[SierraDragon]

How full is the HDD? Just curious.

[Nergol]

400GB free on a 1TB drive.

[The Godfather]

Compression will not work on compressed movies because they are already optimally compressed streams.
Docx, HTML and perhaps PDF will compress as advertised.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by The Godfather 

Compression will not work on compressed movies because they are already optimally compressed streams.
Docx, HTML and perhaps PDF will compress as advertised.

You aren't wrong but where did this come from?

[The Godfather]

Oops i thought "data doubler" referred to an on the fly compression software, ala ram doubler.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by The Godfather 

Oops i thought "data doubler" referred to an on the fly compression software, ala ram doubler.

I had a feeling you did.

[P]

Originally Posted by The Godfather 

Oops i thought "data doubler" referred to an on the fly compression software, ala ram doubler.

I haven't heard of Data Doubler, but Disk Doubler (from the thread title) is actually very old compression software, quite popular back in the System 7 days.

[Waragainstsleep]

Those were the days. *Sigh*

[Nergol]

The main thing I'm concerned about is that I sometimes get stutters when I play video off that drive, especially (but not limited to) large, high-quality files. It never happened when I had the same videos on an external FireWire drive.

It's not constant - just occasional, no more than an annoyance, really, but concerning. I have no other problems with the drive. I even have my iTunes library on that drive and never get stutters in the audio or anything. But like I said, it's annoying, and concerning.

Disk utility reports everything on the drive is OK. It's less than a month old, so I doubt that fragmentation is a problem. The videos are .avis, .mkvs, and .mp4s, played with VLC 2.0.1.

Any ideas about why this is happening? Or is the answer just "It's a 5400RPM drive - what did you expect?"

[Waragainstsleep]

Unless your files have data rates in excess of the 75MB/sec you are getting, that shouldn't happen, no.

[Nergol]

So any ideas about what might be causing this stutter?

[SierraDragon]

Lame drive?

[P]

Well, what have you excluded? What does SMART say - not just green in Disk Utility but the actual numbers? Does the drive pass the regular disk test?

[Nergol]

Which utility would you recommend I use for the SMART data - SMARTReporter, or SMART Utility?

I've run Disk Utility on the drive multiple times, and it's passed with flying colors.

[P]

Whichever lets you see the raw data.

[Nergol]

Is this what you were looking for?

[P]

Actually I meant the data that you'd see if you pushed the "Show all attributes" button above, but I can see the most important part: You don't seem to have any read errors, which eliminates that problem.

Have you tried disabling drive spin down (in the energy saver)?

[Nergol]

Originally Posted by P 

Actually I meant the data that you'd see if you pushed the "Show all attributes" button above, but I can see the most important part: You don't seem to have any read errors, which eliminates that problem.

Have you tried disabling drive spin down (in the energy saver)?

Yup. Didn't stop the problem.

[Nergol]

My speed test, BTW:



And full SMART attributes: