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General discussion

Playing Video from an external USB hard drive

Feb 23, 2011 7:15PM PST

Hi,

I had trouble playing videos from my portable (USB-powered) Western Digital 1 TB hard drive. The video stops and stutters. When I copied the video to my hard drive though it played fine. So I guess that eliminates the possibilities that there's something wrong with (a)the video or (b)the PC that's playing it?

Next I tried a similar thing with my portable Western Digital 500GB hard drive. I didn't actually use the same video but a similar one and the video played fine from the hard drive. I didn't have to copy it to my internal HD.

So does someone have any idea why this might be and how I can fix it? I'd like to use my 1TB play movies without having to copy them to internal hard drive every time.

Another thing: my 1TB HD (which I'm having problem with) has NTFS format while my 500GB one has FAT32 - if that helps.

Thanks!
Priya

Discussion is locked

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Re: video
Feb 23, 2011 7:22PM PST

1. Better repeat the experiment by playing that OTHER (similar) video from this 1 TB hard drive also. Just to be sure.

2. To check and compare the speed of these 2 hard drives measure the time needed to copy such a video (same file, of course, on the SAME USB-port on the SAME laptop/PC) from the drive to your internal hard disk. A typical speed would be 10 to 15 MB a second. That's more than enough to support a non-stuttering play. Do you get that speed with both files?

3. Is that 500 GB drive also USB powered?

Kees

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Re:Video
Feb 24, 2011 12:42AM PST

1. Better repeat the experiment by playing that OTHER (similar) video from this 1 TB hard drive also. Just to be sure.

I just tried it. When I played the same video from both external hard drives it stuttered with the 1TB one and didn't with the 500GB one.


2. To check and compare the speed of these 2 hard drives measure the time needed to copy such a video (same file, of course, on the SAME USB-port on the SAME laptop/PC) from the drive to your internal hard disk. A typical speed would be 10 to 15 MB a second. That's more than enough to support a non-stuttering play. Do you get that speed with both files?

I tried copying a 700MB file from both hard drives. The speed was about 26-27MBps with the 500GB hard drive and 23-24MBps with the 1TB hard drive.


3. Is that 500 GB drive also USB powered?

Yes.