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1TB hard drive made my macbook pro slow

B

bcrguy

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 29, 2009
171
0
Burlington Ontario Canada
ok so last night i installed a brand new 1TB western digital scorpio blue hard drive into my macbook pro (specs below). then i booted osx from the disk that came with my mac when i bought it, formatted the new drive and then restored using a time machine backup..

however now its really slow, i go to play a movie or tv show from itunes (one thats on my hdd) and it will stop after a few seconds, almost like its buffering...

i made a couple partitions and it helped a little bit but not much, anytime i need to open somtehing it takes forever..

did i miss something when restoring/reinstalling??
thanks

EDIT: the drive that im referring to is NOT the 1TB external drive in my sig
 
Last edited:
bcrguy said:
ok so last night i installed a brand new 1TB western digital scorpio blue hard drive into my macbook pro (specs below). then i booted osx from the disk that came with my mac when i bought it, formatted the new drive and then restored using a time machine backup..

however now its really slow, i go to play a movie or tv show from itunes (one thats on my hdd) and it will stop after a few seconds, almost like its buffering...

i made a couple partitions and it helped a little bit but not much, anytime i need to open somtehing it takes forever..

did i miss something when restoring/reinstalling??
thanks
Click to expand...
Can you provide some details on the drive.
 
To the original poster:

Your signature says the 1TB harddrive is an external unit? If so, then it's maybe not so strange if you're experiencing low performance, especially if it's connected through the USB ports.

Firewire is better, but still nowhere near as fast as the internal SATA3 interface, or the new thunderbolt connector on the 2011 Macs.

Also: if you're experiencing slow or lagging performance when starting up stuff it may be the drive is in power save mode. Almost all 1TB drives today, especially external ones, are physically larger 3.5" drives rather than the much smaller 2.5" variety mounted internally in laptops today. These wider platters take much longer to spin up to speed, and you'll experience a noticeable delay when this happens.

It's the laws of physics at work I'm afraid; unavoidable unless you turn off power saving for the device to prevent it from spinning down its platters.
 
Lennyvalentin said:
To the original poster:

Your signature says the 1TB harddrive is an external unit? If so, then it's maybe not so strange if you're experiencing low performance, especially if it's connected through the USB ports.

Firewire is better, but still nowhere near as fast as the internal SATA3 interface, or the new thunderbolt connector on the 2011 Macs.

Also: if you're experiencing slow or lagging performance when starting up stuff it may be the drive is in power save mode. Almost all 1TB drives today, especially external ones, are physically larger 3.5" drives rather than the much smaller 2.5" variety mounted internally in laptops today. These wider platters take much longer to spin up to speed, and you'll experience a noticeable delay when this happens.

It's the laws of physics at work I'm afraid; unavoidable unless you turn off power saving for the device to prevent it from spinning down its platters.
Click to expand...

the 1tb drive thats in my sig is the drive i use for backing up, the one i am referring to in the post is an internal one. when i said see below i was meaning for the specs on the macbook pro when it was stock.
 
bcrguy said:
no not yet, il try that now, which test am i running?? Theres a drop down menu with a few different options..
Click to expand...

DISK READ/WRITE

Screen%20shot%202011-07-08%20at%204.35.46%20AM.png
 
bcrguy said:
when i said see below i was meaning for the specs on the macbook pro when it was stock.
Click to expand...
Ah, I see. My bad then! :)

What model number exactly is the drive you've bought? It might help, although for most intents and purposes, a 1TB internal drive should be noticeably faster than an older 250GB unit, sometimes by a lot depending on how old the older drive is, unless the 250GB drive spins at 7200RPM and the 1TB drive at 4800 or 5400RPM. That's where it's helpful to know the model number... ;)
 
bcrguy said:
ok so i ran the test using exactly what you had in that pic you posted up and i got a write of 15 MB/s and read of 39.9MB/s and this is after i partitioned the drive (just under 400 GB)
Click to expand...

Then the drive is *****. Return it and get a new one or a smaller 7200RPM one.
I once had a 2.5" 1TB Toshiba HDD tested via FW800 and got read speeds of 35MB/s and write speeds of 65MB/s. I now just use it in a USB enclosure for backup purposes.
 
Lennyvalentin said:
Ah, I see. My bad then! :)

What model number exactly is the drive you've bought? It might help, although for most intents and purposes, a 1TB internal drive should be noticeably faster than an older 250GB unit, sometimes by a lot depending on how old the older drive is, unless the 250GB drive spins at 7200RPM and the 1TB drive at 4800 or 5400RPM. That's where it's helpful to know the model number... ;)
Click to expand...

model number is:
WDC WD10TPVT-00U4RT1
its a 5200 rpm as opposed to the 5400rpm 250 that was stock
 
If RPMs are the same for both drives, and the extremely low read/write figures you report, then you've either got a bad drive on your hands, or possibly, the data cable isn't attached properly and you're getting massive amounts of bad data packets due to poor contact. I'd expect Macos to throw up a warning about that though, but logically it should do the same for such low disk performance as you're having, assuming it supports SMART reporting... (It should, but I don't know for sure.)

Can you test the drive on another system? A PC works fine too. Just backup any important information since you'll need to reformat the drive to do a proper test.
 
Lennyvalentin said:
If RPMs are the same for both drives, and the extremely low read/write figures you report, then you've either got a bad drive on your hands, or possibly, the data cable isn't attached properly and you're getting massive amounts of bad data packets due to poor contact. I'd expect Macos to throw up a warning about that though, but logically it should do the same for such low disk performance as you're having, assuming it supports SMART reporting... (It should, but I don't know for sure.)

Can you test the drive on another system? A PC works fine too. Just backup any important information since you'll need to reformat the drive to do a proper test.
Click to expand...

unfortunatly i cannot i dont have a second system to get into.. im just going to switch it at the place i got it.. i know they ordered it in for me but they ordered a second one so il grab it..

thanks all for the help
 
ok so tried a new 1 tb drive and same thing... this is aggravating.. im gonna take this drive back out tomorrow and try my original 250 again and do a benchmark then post back up...
 
i have the samsung spinpoint 1tb drive in my 2010 mbp and get 86/86 for the read/write in that test and have no problems whatsoever
 
I find that even when loading websites in safari OS X will make my external drives spin up causing a delay and sometimes a pinwheel before it loads the site. I have no idea why it keeps checking the external drives.
 
atMac said:
I find that even when loading websites in safari OS X will make my external drives spin up causing a delay and sometimes a pinwheel before it loads the site. I have no idea why it keeps checking the external drives.
Click to expand...

This isn't the external in my sig.. This is an internal one causing issues.. Also I get the pinwheel as well as non responsive programs more often then I care to admit..
 
Kind of a stupid question but if I up the ram to 6 or 8 gb will that help my problem at all?? I was planning on doin it anyways so I figured I'd check before returning the drive a second time.
 
OP, I'm running the same drive and here are the speeds I'm getting:
 

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Nope, it's actually been a very quiet, fast, reliable drive. Here's the results of the test @ 1 GB:
 

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ok so i put in my original 250gb drive and did the aja system test and got 25.7 for write and 26.4 for read... but no lagging or anything.. drive is going back monday and im gonna get a 500gb 7200 rpm one..
 
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