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Running Movies off of Seagate GoFlex Portable 1.5TB HDD on rMBP

C

Callumbear845

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 24, 2011
85
0
I bought a portable USB 3.0 1.5TB Seagate GoFlex portable HDD to house my extensive movie collection when I bought my rMBP. The problem that I am running into now is that whenever I play movies off of the drive through iTunes, there is always a freeze and stutter every 6-12 minutes of the movie. It can be as long a second and a half or so each and makes movies extremely irritating to watch. Has anyone else had a similar problem or a solution to this? It seems to me that because I have so much RAM, iTunes could in theory move the whole movie over to the RAM and not have to access the disk, which I think is the problem. Unfortunately, it does not do this, as I think that this could be the perfect solution.
Does anyone have any ideas?
 
I can do the same with many external HDDs on my 2009 MBP or 2007 iMac, even with HD video and from "slow" USB 2.0 drives. I just don't use iTunes, I use Movist or VLC Player for playback of entertainment videos.
 
Callumbear845 said:
I bought a portable USB 3.0 1.5TB Seagate GoFlex portable HDD to house my extensive movie collection when I bought my rMBP. The problem that I am running into now is that whenever I play movies off of the drive through iTunes, there is always a freeze and stutter every 6-12 minutes of the movie. It can be as long a second and a half or so each and makes movies extremely irritating to watch. Has anyone else had a similar problem or a solution to this? It seems to me that because I have so much RAM, iTunes could in theory move the whole movie over to the RAM and not have to access the disk, which I think is the problem. Unfortunately, it does not do this, as I think that this could be the perfect solution.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...

move the movie to the internal hd when you want to watch surely it will only take 30-40 seconds to transfer from the external to the internal

oh ya and dont use iTunes
 
I just tried watching a movie using Quicktime and I had the same problem. It seems to be more linked with the HDD than iTunes. My other problem is that the movies that I purchased through iTunes can't be played through VLC, so about a fifth of my movies must be played through Quicktime or iTunes.
 
Callumbear845 said:
I just tried watching a movie using Quicktime and I had the same problem. It seems to be more linked with the HDD than iTunes. My other problem is that the movies that I purchased through iTunes can't be played through VLC, so about a fifth of my movies must be played through Quicktime or iTunes.
Click to expand...

what about my suggestion of moving to the internal drive does that fix the issue?
 
Callumbear845 said:
Yes. That fixes the issue. It is just a hassle. I like the convenience of just being able to browse through my movies and play one on a whim.
Click to expand...

Just thought I'd let you know, I watch movies from my external all the time, and it's only a USB 2.0. No frame skips or stutters.

I also use a combination of vlc and quicktime.

Return the external for a new one?
 
Callumbear845 said:
Yes. That fixes the issue. It is just a hassle. I like the convenience of just being able to browse through my movies and play one on a whim.
Click to expand...

does the portable hard drive also have option for AC power that can determine if the USB is giving it enough power

you could also test your usb port by trying to play a movie of a USB flash stick if you have one

only other suggestion is return the drive
 
It's a USB 3.0 port, so power shouldn't be an issue because they can supply more power than a USB 2.0 port, I believe. I may try to return the drive to amazon. I haven't checked their return policy yet, as I purchased the drive more than a month ago.
 
Callumbear845 said:
It's a USB 3.0 port, so power shouldn't be an issue because they can supply more power than a USB 2.0 port, I believe. I may try to return the drive to amazon. I haven't checked their return policy yet, as I purchased the drive more than a month ago.
Click to expand...

if its more than 30 days you might have to go through Seagate for warranty issues
 
In order to find out, what may be wrong with your video, you can use the following three applications to analyse a sample video file.
When done, you can use the "Report" (VideoSpec) and "Export" (Media Inspector) button to export a report,
attachable to your next post via the
2012_02_MR_attachbutton.png
button.
In MediaInfo you have to go to the Menu Bar, select View > Text and copy the text via CMD+A > CMD+C and paste it via CMD+V into your next post.​

You can use the following applications to benchmark the speed of your external HDD, to see, if it is the culprit:
 
simsaladimbamba said:
In order to find out, what may be wrong with your video, you can use the following three applications to analyse a sample video file.
When done, you can use the "Report" (VideoSpec) and "Export" (Media Inspector) button to export a report,
attachable to your next post via the Image button.
In MediaInfo you have to go to the Menu Bar, select View > Text and copy the text via CMD+A > CMD+C and paste it via CMD+V into your next post.​

You can use the following applications to benchmark the speed of your external HDD, to see, if it is the culprit:
Click to expand...

The drive is running at about 75 MB/s for both reads and writes, which should be more than enough. I am sure that the problem is not the video files because they play fine once moved to the internal drive and they play fine on my old computer.
 
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