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Portable Hard Drive Problem

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Hi everybody, I'm having some problems with my one year old portable 1TB Western Digital drive. When I connect it to my laptop, it takes around 5 minutes to recognize the device, and then when it does, I enter it via explorer and it may/may not freeze, but when it does, bang, another 5 minutes. And this goes on for every other folder I click into. I have home movies on there and when I play them, it takes an incredibly long time to load, usually only playing 4 seconds done in a minute. I have tried it with another laptop, which detected it instantly, then the loading problems started again. I have never had any problems with this hard drive before, and it hasn't been dropped or anything to trigger this behavior. It seems all the data is still present, but just having trouble accessing it.

Also tested with my WD TV Media Player, producing the same results.

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is it a "green" drive? they were notorious slow, hence the "green". they released a firmware update for the issue. however, you should scan with WD Drive Tools, and pay attention to strange sounds and any problem after the update. make sure to back it up first. it may just be dying

abbadon_34 said:
is it a "green" drive? they were notorious slow, hence the "green". they released a firmware update for the issue. however, you should scan with WD Drive Tools, and pay attention to strange sounds and any problem after the update. make sure to back it up first. it may just be dying



Not quite sure what you mean by "green". My one is an Elements, and as I said before, have experienced no problems like this before with it. Going to try scanning it with WD tools.

OK, I've run WD tools and it started up as normal, but didn't load up straight away, and then when loaded up, my hard drive is listed as a logical drive, but not a physical drive. There was some clicking sounds when it started, and now there is only a very minor clicking sound every 15 or so seconds.

As for backing up, near impossible it looks like. Copying keeps freezing, and when it is going it is going at VERY slow speeds.
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clicking is VERY bad. BACKUP NOW and replace. Try to get the important stuff and go file by file if you have to. It should still be under warranty, and WD is very good about with that. You can either send it to them when you're done (wiping data if necessary/possible) or have a replacement send first if you give them your credit card, and just remember to send the dead drive in.

abbadon_34 said:
clicking is VERY bad. BACKUP NOW and replace. Try to get the important stuff and go file by file if you have to. It should still be under warranty, and WD is very good about with that. You can either send it to them when you're done (wiping data if necessary/possible) or have a replacement send first if you give them your credit card, and just remember to send the dead drive in.


Oh man, how long have I got and what is happening? Is it dying? Is it recoverable?? I don't have a Hard Drive capable of backing up everything right now, so could I just send it to recovery specialist and have them back it up?

By the way, does this sort of thing just happen or have I done something to cause this? It lives in a case, I safely eject, and it has never been dropped. The only thing I can think of is that recently it went under 100GB free, but wouldn't affect it with all the clicking would it? Then again, it does travel a lot, it goes nearly everywhere I go, possible I could have knocked it.

Drives die for any number of reason, some are predictable, some aren't. Unless it a laptop or portable drive that got jarred during use, normally it's nothing you did. Once the drive powers down and the heads park you're usually good. When clicking time is measure in hours to days. Professional recovery is rather expensive so consider how important the info is.

Well, today the hard drive has started working normally again. But I haven't done anything to bring on this change of settings! The clicking sounds have stopped too. I'm not taking any chances, and taking advantage of the increased backup speeds, but why is this happening?
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