WD10EADS Stuttering playing movies.

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jtg1993

Gawd
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Apr 25, 2008
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Over the last few days whenever I try to play a movie from my 1TB drive it stutters but the same movie from a different drive plays fine. What do you think it could be?

Here is a bit of info about the drive:
Fileystem: ext3
Timing cached reads: 1174 MB in 2.00 seconds = 586.93 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 268 MB in 3.01 seconds = 88.92 MB/sec

This is all from smart:
Power On: 281.3 Days
Firmware: 01.01A01
Temperature: 31c
Read Error Rate: 0
Spinup Time: 6s
Start/Stop count: 101
Reallocated Sectors: 0
Seek Error Rate: 0
Spinup Retry Count: 0
Calibraton Retry Count: 0
Power Cycle Count: 97
Power Off Retract Count: 12
Load/Unload Cycle Count: 101
Reallocation Count: 0
Current Pending Sector Count: 0
Uncorrectable Sector Count: 0
UDMA CRC Error Rate: 0
Write Error Rate: 0


EDIT: Its acting fine right now, but that could be because I paused my torrent. But that's not right that a 50KB/s download would make the drive stutter.
 
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I use a 500GB GP drive as a system drive on my server. Doing, torrents and even trying to copy something while it is doing that or extracting... brings the system to an almost halt.

I think mine has bad sectors... but I'm to lazy to log onto it locally to check...
Do some more real world experiments... as well as long disk check tests.
 
I'm using a wd10eads as a second drive, and I also have issues with movie playback - but only when jumping backward (I tend to do that a lot). Its probably the damn power saving head park feature or some other power saving thing. I get foobar to poll the drive when watching stuff now. The older 7200 rpm drive it replaced just worked better for this. I am sure it's not related to bandwith, even the slowest sd card is better for playback than wd10eads. I guess you just can't have power savings and performance for hdd's.
 
Hmm, seems like I'm the exception. I'm using the same drive for general storage/media playback, and I haven't had any of the issues you guys are reporting. Have you guys gone into Device Manager and set the drive for higher performance?
 
@jtg1993

I am also running ext3 with WD5000AADS GP on one of the hosts serving many connections. I do have 2GB ram.

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 5108 MB in 2.00 seconds = 2554.79 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 318 MB in 3.00 seconds = 105.91 MB/sec

I disabled the drive's idle support since the host is almost always busy during normal hours. Perhaps you can also try adjusting the drive read-ahead buffer (no logical explanation, just blind test :) )
 
lightp2 said:
@jtg1993

I am also running ext3 with WD5000AADS GP on one of the hosts serving many connections. I do have 2GB ram.

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 5108 MB in 2.00 seconds = 2554.79 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 318 MB in 3.00 seconds = 105.91 MB/sec

I disabled the drive's idle support since the host is almost always busy during normal hours. Perhaps you can also try adjusting the drive read-ahead buffer (no logical explanation, just blind test :) )
Click to expand...

What did you use to disable the idle support?
 
I use the wdidle3.exe (look for the latest version) to disable it.

I am not 100% sure but after re-reading your 1st post, I think that may not be the problem. Some say for newer manufacturing batch GP drives WD has modified the firmware behavior such that you no longer need to do this. From your SMART statistic, your Load/Unload Cycle Count is only 101 times for Power On of 281.3 day so problem caused by head park/unpark is likely not the issue.

You mention torrent, perhaps sometimes there too many upload/download connections causing random i/o stress but I also agree it not very likely due to low usage suggestion.

You can try the read-ahead buffer or if you have time and determined, you can also try switching to the Deadline I/O scheduler. (the scheduler is beyond me so you need expert assistance for that)
 
hey, i am having some problems playing back HD content from this drive also. randomly the video will pause, stuter and then catch up eventually. its not my network because other movies play back fine from other drives. did you find a solution that worked?
 
I had to put my 1TB and 1.5TB Greens into a external enclosure and use ESATA to stop the stuttering/pausing. My 1TB Green, from my first post, had always been in an external enclosure so i didn't know that my system was having the same issues. I tried putting it and another 1.5TB in the case the other night, and I had the same exact symptoms everyone is describing. Seems to be a somewhat wide spread problem, but noone has found a cause or fix yet and WD isn't admitting anything.
 
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Random IO on a 5400RPM drive is goint to suck no matter what size it is.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Random IO on a 5400RPM drive is goint to suck no matter what size it is.
Click to expand...

Thats true, I never really though of that. My drive has been better lately, it only stutters and drops a few frames at the beginning then it plays fine. But im only playing SD videos not HD.
 
Video playback isn't random i/o, it's pretty sequential unless the file in question is heavily fragmented. Sounds like something else is acting on the drive. Make sure indexing is disabled.

Dustin
 
dustNbone said:
Video playback isn't random i/o, it's pretty sequential unless the file in question is heavily fragmented. Sounds like something else is acting on the drive. Make sure indexing is disabled.

Dustin
Click to expand...

He said its fine when he isnt runing torrents.

Torrents are making multiple Reads and writes simultaneously.
 
As it's been stated, this is not a drive problem, but rather an usage problem. I can stream Blu-ray content off all my WD Green drives just fine. And I've got Green drives that range in age from the original WD10EACS to the later WD10EADS.
 
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