western digital mypassport 500gb

[Sadaiyappan]

Hi bought this external usb hard drive and am using it with ubuntu. When I got the drive I reformatted it to ext3 and am using it, but when I bought it said it was 480Mbps transfer rate over USB 2.0.. I only get around 5-6 MBps which I guess is 30 Mbps, it's no where near 400Mbps.. Is it supposed to be this slow? Is 5-6 MBps fast enough to play 1080p video? The main reason I bought the drive was to store HD video.

 

[Blain]

480Mbps is the theoretical maximum speed.
That speed is never realized in real world application.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Sadaiyappan
Hi bought this external usb hard drive and am using it with ubuntu. When I got the drive I reformatted it to ext3 and am using it, but when I bought it said it was 480Mbps transfer rate over USB 2.0.. I only get around 5-6 MBps which I guess is 30 Mbps, it's no where near 400Mbps.. Is it supposed to be this slow? Is 5-6 MBps fast enough to play 1080p video? The main reason I bought the drive was to store HD video.

USB 2.0 is not actually 480 Mbps. That is the burst speed, but I think that in reality the stream rate is somewhere closer to 100 Mbps.

1080p streaming... that all depends on the quality of the video. Not all 1080p is created equal and the bitrates can vary from 50 Mb/s for BluRay (if I have this right) and around 10-15Mb/s for a 1080p trailer from say... Apple.com or Yahoo.com.

So, as it stands right now, I think that you are ok, but you do seem to be experiencing slower than usual transfer rates. Are those speeds reading or writing?

 

[Sadaiyappan]

I was writing files to the hard drive, it was 5 - 6 MBps

 

[RebateMonger]

A hard drive connected via USB 2.0 will give 20-ish MegaBytes per second data transfers. But that assumes a "reasonably fast" hard drive, which those tiny drives maybe aren't.