[MikeeF]

Hi I have a 3.5" Hard drive in a external usb box and it has suddenly gone really slow. Taking ages to fetch and copy data back to my 2 laptops. I have tried twice to run the windows error checking program. Having to leave it at least 24 hour to run, it eventually gave up both times at phase 4 giving no info why just it failed.


Please Help I have 330 GB of data on that drive and at that slow rate it could take months.

[MikeeF]

I seem to be able to transfer files to my laptops but only at 3MB/sec

Is the Drive dieing ?

[MikeeF]

Bump Noone?

[Triple6]

It very well may be dying, hence why backups are stressed so heavily.

You can try removing the hard drive from the enclosure and installing it internally in a computer and try copying the data off that way; if it copies fast then it may just be the enclosure.

There are diagnostics that can be run to test the hard drive, but if you want the data then you should attempt to get it off the drive first.

[Elvandil]

Slow transfers are a sign of file system corruption, absent any hardware problems. If chkdsk can't finish in reasonable time, the drive may be on its last legs. Stopping chkdsk before it finishes can also damage files and the file system.

The drive is likely toast, so use your backups. External drives are the most unreliable of all storage media and you should always have backups.

All drives are failing from the day they start up. It's just a matter of time.

[MikeeF]

Thanks Guys I've sent it back to Western Digital and they are sending me a new one!