EXTREMELY slow read speeds - Optibay HDD

I think it highly depends on which optibay you have, since there are a number of manufactuerers beyond the name brand OWC (macsales.com). I also know that the hard drive matters as well, some people were reporting that using SATA III drives in older systems that do not support SATA III indeeds makes the OPTIBAY drive run on SATA I. It could be a number reasons that you are getting those slow speeds.

MathiasVH said:

Hi there

Lately I've experienced seriously slow read speeds with my Optibay HDD. We're talking no more than 5mb/s (it used to be around 80). Write speeds are as fantastic as ever. I find it very weird. I've tried everything I can think of: First disk utility, then Drive Genius and then various small things like disabling journaling (even though this should only affect write speeds). Nothing has helped. Is the drive failing or can it be something else?

Best regards

Mathias

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I am using on my late 2008 MBP (see sig) a Samsung 830 64GB as boot drive and moved the Seagate Momentus XT in a cheap optibay I bought from ebay. The speed does not depend on the optibay. The Samsung is a SATA III (6GB/s) while my MBP is SATA II (3GB/s).

The R/W speed I am having on my HDD is a bit lower than what it used to be as the main boot drive. I didn't format the drive though because I still need to do some data migration:

Samsung 830 (4GB stress):
Read: 168.8 MB/s
Write: 252.3 MB/s

Seagate Momentus XT (4GB stress):
Read: 59.4 MB/s
Write: 59.1 MB/s

MathiasVH said:

Well, thanks I guess, but I already knew that

The question is quite simple: My HDD has very slow read speeds. It was fast before. What can I do?

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1) Connect the HDD back with the main sata connector and test again.
2) Get another HDD and test it in the optibay sata.

MathiasVH said:

Hi there

Lately I've experienced seriously slow read speeds with my Optibay HDD. We're talking no more than 5mb/s (it used to be around 80). Write speeds are as fantastic as ever. I find it very weird. I've tried everything I can think of: First disk utility, then Drive Genius and then various small things like disabling journaling (even though this should only affect write speeds). Nothing has helped. Is the drive failing or can it be something else?

Best regards

Mathias

Click to expand...

Hi I have same thing
it is due to cheap china product from ebay...
that converter adapter from PATA to SATA what is inside hdd caddy is complete crap !
it is SATA I but in reality it is like 1/10 of SATA I pathetic !

EthosX said:

Hi I have same thing
it is due to cheap china product from ebay...
that converter adapter from PATA to SATA what is inside hdd caddy is complete crap !
it is SATA I but in reality it is like 1/10 of SATA I pathetic !

Click to expand...

The cheap optibay I bought from ebay has a SATA connector which is the same as the MBP unibody optical SATA connector. The cables and connectors are the same and are valid for SATA I, II, and III.

Rpp

sofianito said:

The cheap optibay I bought from ebay has a SATA connector which is the same as the MBP unibody optical SATA connector. The cables and connectors are the same and are valid for SATA I, II, and III.

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Can u post pic how that odd caddy looks like just to compare with mine..
I have 500G toshiba 5400rpm attached in .. speed is 5MB when copying on that hdd

How full is the disk? Have you tried defragmenting it? (requires a tool such as iDefrag)

Don't believe what you may have heard, HFS+ does need defragmenting. Just last week I had to defrag one of the MacBooks here as it was running incredibly slow:

sofianito said:

The cheap optibay I bought from ebay has a SATA connector which is the same as the MBP unibody optical SATA connector. The cables and connectors are the same and are valid for SATA I, II, and III.

Click to expand...

It should just be a passthrough connector.

I'm guessing you already tried reformatting the hard drive? If so defragging won't do anything.

albert1028 said:

I think it highly depends on which optibay you have, since there are a number of manufactuerers beyond the name brand OWC (macsales.com). I also know that the hard drive matters as well, some people were reporting that using SATA III drives in older systems that do not support SATA III indeeds makes the OPTIBAY drive run on SATA I. It could be a number reasons that you are getting those slow speeds.

Click to expand...

Optibays don't do anything other than acting like an extender.

EthosX said:

Hi I have same thing
it is due to cheap china product from ebay...
that converter adapter from PATA to SATA what is inside hdd caddy is complete crap !
it is SATA I but in reality it is like 1/10 of SATA I pathetic !

Click to expand...

What what what? PATA to SATA? PATA hasn't been used in years, or even closer to a decade.

arashb said:

What what what? PATA to SATA? PATA hasn't been used in years, or even closer to a decade.

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I have macbook pro 2007 you know ..
And EVEN early 2008 still has PATA..

EthosX said:

I have macbook pro 2007 you know ..

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Oh that makes a lot of sense. Then in your case, if you're using a converter then it could be the issue. But to the OP, his is a sata passthrough so no matter how cheap the case, I don't think it an issue for him.

arashb said:

Oh that makes a lot of sense. Then in your case, if you're using a converter then it could be the issue. But to the OP, his is a sata passthrough so no matter how cheap the case, I don't think it an issue for him.

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Yeah so dont say decades man :-D
in his case he has SATA II he should try another drive..

EthosX said:

Yeah so dont say decades man :-D
in his case he has SATA II he should try another drive..

Click to expand...

Haha, I never said decades.. I said close to a decade :]. And half a decade rounds up to a decade :]

Ever since upgrading to Mountain Lion, this has happened to me too. It causes iTunes to lag horribly and stop in the middle of tracks because I've moved my 75 GB library to the HDD in the Optibay, and because I have also moved my Mail storage, that too is slowed considerably.

Any ideas?

Specs:
Mid-2010 15" Unibody MacBook Pro, 2.66 GHz Core i7, 8GB RAM, nVidia GT330M
SSD (HDD Bay) = Kingston HyperMAX 3K 120 GB w/ Mountain Lion
HDD (Optibay) = Factory 500 GB 7200 HDD.