What's your MBP HD's writing & reading speed

Question

Level 1

35 points

What's your MBP HD's writing & reading speed

I found there might be problems with my makbook pro 1.83g,

The writing & reading speed is slow!

I made 2 partitions of the HD, and tried copying a 280mb video file from partition A to partition B. I opened active monitor to have the readings.

The disk writing & reading speed has never reached 20mb/s, never,,,,,,,.

My g5 1.6 is 43mb/s.

As I remembered, the HD inside the MBP is actually SATA 5400RPM HD, which should be fast, isn't it?

what do you think? what's your readings?

PM g5 1.6, PB Ti 867,iPod with video 30g, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on Jun 6, 2006 8:25 AM

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Answer 1

Outsider

Level 1

115 points

Jun 6, 2006 8:28 AM in response to Larry Zhou

My HD is the same, it's a 120 GB 5400 RPM and while I had my MBP (it's in repair right now), it read and wrote everything fairly fast except for when I was converting an MPEG4 file to the iPod format. It was odd however, as it took less time to actually convert from DVD to MPEG4 than it did to convert to the iPod format. I suppose it could be due to my perfomance settings possibly.

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Answer 2

Larry Zhou Author

Level 1

35 points

Jun 6, 2006 6:00 PM in response to Outsider

hey, Outsider,

could you post your HD's reading& writing readings when you copy large files?

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Answer 3

Jun 6, 2006 6:49 PM in response to Larry Zhou

2 partitions of the HD, and tried copying a 280mb video file from partition A to partition B

You do realize that copying to different partitions on the same HD is a very poor judge of speed don't you? The Heads must first read, then write, then read.... In effect, you will see about half the speed that you would if you were copying to a different HD on a different bus. In that case one drive would be only reading while the other drive is only writing. Makes a heck of a difference. Try copying to a different drive, preferably on a different bus, if you want to judge speed. Or just get a copy of Xbench and run the disk test 😉

TiBook 667, FW800 Dual 1.25 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

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Answer 4

Larry Zhou Author

Level 1

35 points

Jun 6, 2006 7:14 PM in response to Thomas Barrett

2 partitions of the HD, and tried copying a 280mb
video file from partition A to partition B

You do realize that copying to different partitions
on the same HD is a very poor judge of speed don't
you? The Heads must first read, then write, then
read.... In effect, you will see about half the speed
that you would if you were copying to a different HD
on a different bus. In that case one drive would be
only reading while the other drive is only writing.
Makes a heck of a difference. Try copying to a
different drive, preferably on a different bus, if
you want to judge speed. Or just get a copy of Xbench
and run the disk test 😉

TiBook 667, FW800 Dual 1.25
Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I will try xbench right away

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Answer 5

Larry Zhou Author

Level 1

35 points

Jun 6, 2006 7:25 PM in response to Larry Zhou

Disk Test 29.32
Sequential 56.01
Uncached Write 59.12 36.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 59.46 33.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 44.50 13.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 65.76 33.05 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 19.86
Uncached Write 6.31 0.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 59.16 18.94 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 67.26 0.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 88.60 16.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]

this the test result. quite bad I think.

the overall score is only 53,,,

is there anything wrong with my MBP?

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Answer 6

Jun 6, 2006 7:45 PM in response to Larry Zhou

Looks normal to me. Check out others scores. Just remember, Notebook drives (2.5") are usually slower than Desktop drives (3.5"). Also, I always run the test a second time immediately after the first, just to make sure the drive is awake and ready. If the drive is spun down when the test starts, you get a terrible first reading.

TiBook 667, FW800 Dual 1.25 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

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