Firewire 800 read speed is slow

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I'm using MacBook Pro Early 2011 with WD My Passport Studio 2 TB over Firewire 800 port..

While write speed is very good ( about 60-65 MB/sec. ).. Read speed is almost half of that ( about 30-35 MB/sec. )..

I tried both ports on the external disk but it's the same. Why could something like this happens. Is there an easy way to fix this problem or do you think the disk has a hardware problem?

Plato

Posted 2015-11-06T08:01:25.163

Reputation: 81

Answers

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Speed is dependent on a multitude of factors. I will list appropriate ones here. I'm guessing max speed should be around 70-90MB/s for 5400rpm WD portable drive.

  1. Your Macbook HDD Write Speed is slow 30/35MB <-- limiting WD 2TB Portable 5400rpm file copy
  2. The data you copy is a multitude of over ~500 files thus slowing down copying
  3. Data is Fragmented, files are split physically on the portable HDD, thus requiring time to seek and return.
  4. Other programs are using the Portable Disk, such as virus scan
  5. You enabled drive encryption, this slows things down based off encryption speed
  6. "Chance" that your HDD is failing, use HD tune to www.hdtune.com check that

Pathfinder

Posted 2015-11-06T08:01:25.163

Reputation: 1 068

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  • Actually it's pretty good. My main HDD is a SSD. - I tested it with one huge file not multiple small files. I know that small files could reduce the overall speed. - I did this test when it's new. So it wasn't have any files in it except WD support utilities. - I'm using my Mac without any virus software installed. - I don't use drive encryption. - This may be the case. But as I said earlier, this drive is pretty new. And I tested the speeds when I opened the box.
    • < – Plato – 2015-11-07T10:41:49.293

    Asked: 2015-11-06T08:01:25.163

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    Active: 2015-11-06T08:25:00.577