How do I find if something is wrong with my back up drive?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
R

Rasi157

Honorable
Nov 30, 2014
21
0
10,510
I have a Western Digital 1TB Passport external hard drive. I recently dropped it by accident ( roughly 1 metre from above the ground) onto marble tile.

It still works , but I've been noticing that it's a bit unstable. For instance, I have a lot of media files on the drive, and I usually plug and play those files directly on my computer. Now sometimes during a movie it would start to lag or the movie would freeze altogether and take a few seconds to resume. The external drive would for a few seconds not respond as well. This never happened before the drop.

So how can I find the problem with my drive, if any, and a solution.
Thanks in advance :)
 
Solution
Dorian_WD
Hi there,

I am sorry to hear about your issue with your external drive. Hard drives are very sensitive and by dropping it you could have physically damaged yours. From what you are describing I am assuming that the drive may fail any moment now. The first thing you need to do is to backup your data on another data carier. After taking such precautions you could run Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool to check what the overall health status of the drive is. You can download the tool here for free: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=QgL2Rt
If the status is bad then it would be better not to rely on it further and to get a new one so that you don't risk to lose any data.

I hope this helps.
Regards
Sort by date Sort by votes
Dorian_WD

Dorian_WD

Reputable
Jul 31, 2014
16
0
4,540
Hi there,

I am sorry to hear about your issue with your external drive. Hard drives are very sensitive and by dropping it you could have physically damaged yours. From what you are describing I am assuming that the drive may fail any moment now. The first thing you need to do is to backup your data on another data carier. After taking such precautions you could run Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool to check what the overall health status of the drive is. You can download the tool here for free: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=QgL2Rt
If the status is bad then it would be better not to rely on it further and to get a new one so that you don't risk to lose any data.

I hope this helps.
Regards
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
R

Rasi157

Honorable
Nov 30, 2014
21
0
10,510
Thank you so much for the solution. I ran the extended test on the drive, which took 4 and a half hours, and at the end got a pass with a green tick. No bad sectors were detected and no prompts came up during the scan asking to repair bad sectors.

So does this mean that i continue to use the drive?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom