WD drive slowing down

January 11, 2012 2:54:40 PM

I have aWD 3TB External drive that I've been using for a few months now. I recently moved it and and now it's moving extrememly slow. It's also slowing down the computers I plug it into. I tried checking for new drivers, I really don't want to have to format, and Itried unplugging and replugging. All that got me is the laptop takes forever to recognise it again. I tried running norton on it but norton finishes after claiming it scanned but the results stats it only scanned one file. I tried scanning for bad sectors but that was taking three days and only managed 1/10 of the way. I'm not techno savvy so I have no idea what else is in the card.

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Reply to Lostinfantry

CaedenV

January 11, 2012 3:13:34 PM

Well... Is this a USB2 or USB3 drive (man 20mb/s of USB2 would take forever to transfer 3TB of information lol), and are you connected to a USB2 or USB3 computer? USB2 is very slow to begin with, so make sure it is not in your head.
I would try for an RMA, and if that is not an option then I would go buy an aftermarket enclosure for $40 and pop the drive inside it and see if that fixes the problem (most likely the controller board inside is dying, it's what WD does best lol). If that does not do the trick then it means your HDD is dying and you need a new drive, which really sucks with HDD prices right now.

Here's hoping you can RMA! Good luck!

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Reply to CaedenV

Lostinfantry

January 11, 2012 3:31:59 PM

It's a usb 3.0 drive connection but it's connected to a 2.0 port on a dell 14r laptop. And it's not in my head. I have videos on it but when now they're freezing when i skip in the video.

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Reply to Lostinfantry

tuxu

November 22, 2012 7:59:41 PM

hi, I'm having a somewhat similar problem on an XP machine with a q9400 CPU and a 9800gtx+, 4gb dc-ram on two 2gb slots and also a gigabyte mobo that runs at 1333mhz.

since i find similarities i am reluctant to open another thread, so people with that problem and a minimum of searching skills wont have to as well.

My external wd drive is actually an internal in a usb enclosure and it brings my system to a halt every few minutes.

I took it out of the enclosure and have placed it inside my machine with a sata connection.

The halting problem never stopped.

could it be that the problem might be linked to some kind of drive maintenance that i have to do or is it a must that the problem is a hardware one - if so I'd like to understand what the problem is so i can have a wiser choice of my hardware in the future.

thanks ahead.

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Reply to tuxu

forrestoff

December 3, 2012 10:02:00 PM

Here's another datapoint...

I have two WD30EZRX in a software raid configuration for my data disk. I was copying files to them from other WD disks. I was transferring 6.6GB of data, and it started off fast (~60MB/s transfer rate), and then it slowed to 3.57MB/s after about 5 minutes of copying. The slow down was gradual.

Motherboard is a rampage 3 extreme and the two 3TB drives in software raid were receiving files from a hardware raid volume (so through the ICH10R interface). Windows 7, clean install.

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Reply to forrestoff