WD My Passport USB3 drive not handling playing high bitrate movies

[andysor]

I have a growing number of high bitrate 4K HDR ripped movies, that can hit 40-70GB and would like to keep the original quality. My issue is that my current external HD can't keep up and the movies buffer or skip occasionally. Copying large files to my SSD shows 110 MB/s, and playing from the SSD works fine, so I'm not sure why the external drive struggles. Any tips? Will buying a new 4GB internal 3.5" drive work better?

[cj09beira]

not sure you knew this but those external drives are simply a internal drive with a usb to sata adaptor on the end, so all you need to do is open up the plastic casing and take the hdd out, although some drives have a extra pin that you need to block off with some tape.

for tutorials search " wd hdd shuck".

 

 

[Kilrah]

That's not going to do anything for them regarding speed...

[andysor]

1 hour ago, cj09beira said:

not sure you knew this but those external drives are simply a internal drive with a usb to sata adaptor on the end, so all you need to do is open up the plastic casing and take the hdd out, although some drives have a extra pin that you need to block off with some tape.

for tutorials search " wd hdd shuck".

 

 

I've heard this, but it's a 2.5" laptop drive, so I was thinking a 3.5" desktop HD on SATA would be faster? I'm just surprised as 70GB over 2 hours is average read speed of 9.7 MB/s, and the drive manages over 100MB/s when copying large files. I don't know if there's a power save mode I can disable or a performance setting I can use?

[FRD]

Whether it's a 2.5" or 3.5" shouldn't make a difference. What can make a difference on HDDs is whether you have a 5400rpm drive or 7200rpm or even higher. 7200rpm does feel a lot snappier. If you want a better performing HDD, there are faster HDDs out there like the WD Blacks. However, those are close to SSDs prices and have higher costs per TB. In that case you might be better off getting an external SSD in my opinion.