Dropped External HDD, Works but SLOW

[danawesome89]

A few days ago I bumped my 2TB USB 2.0 external HDD. It fell off my desk and landed pretty hard.

I powered up the computer, and noticed that the HDD was still detected. However, when I accessed files it was EXTREMELY slow.

I figured it is about to die so I better try to back it all up so I bought a new 2TB internal HDD, and I am trying to copy all of the data off of it.

However, it is transferring at 364KB/s. Considering I have 0.98TB of files to transfer, this is ridiculous. I let it run all night, and almost no progress.

This whole situation seems weird to me, because shouldn't the HDD either work fine, or be completely broken? Why is it working but just extremely slow?

Any ideas? I don't really want to leave my computer running for days on end to try to transfer all of the files (but I guess I will if I have to).

 

[lonewolf7]

Check the drives status : http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

And RUN CHKDSK /f/r from CMD, it will scan the surface of the drive, and will repair any file system errors.

But if there is a mechanical fault then there's nothing can be done.

 

[danawesome89]

Check the drives status : http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

And RUN CHKDSK /f/r from CMD, it will scan the surface of the drive, and will repair any file system errors.

But if there is a mechanical fault then there's nothing can be done.

Thanks for the ideas. I ran CrystalDiskInfo, and it gives a "caution" rating to my external hdd. I don't really understand what the details actually mean. The things that pop up yellow are: "Reallocated Sectors Count- Current 179, worst- 179, threshold 140"

"Current Pending Sector Count Current 200, Worst 1, Threshold 0"

and "Uncorrectable Sector Count, Current-199, worst 199, threshold-0"

I also ran the CHKDSK, and it popped up a DOS looking window for a second, but I'm not really sure what it did (if anything)

Transfers are still slow (the one I'm doing right now is about 1MB per second, which is somewhat faster than it was doing earlier, but still seems slow)

 

[lonewolf7]

Ok, that's not bad enough reading to dump the drive right away. If it's transferring data's 1MB/sec then let it be. Take your time to transfer, when its over, format the drive with a bootable media(DVD/USB), and create fresh partitions.

Then take a look with CrystalDiskInfo again, and keep an eye on the numbers, if its increasing fast then you have to replace the drive, else you can carry on using it.

If its under warranty you can RMA it, provided there is no physical damage seen on the drive, else you know what will happen. Lol. Good luck.

 

[danawesome89]

Ok, that's not bad enough reading to dump the drive right away. If it's transferring data's 1MB/sec then let it be. Take your time to transfer, when its over, format the drive with a bootable media(DVD/USB), and create fresh partitions.

Then take a look with CrystalDiskInfo again, and keep an eye on the numbers, if its increasing fast then you have to replace the drive, else you can carry on using it.

If its under warranty you can RMA it, provided there is no physical damage seen on the drive, else you know what will happen. Lol. Good luck.

It's a few years old, so no warranty.

Yeah, I think I'll just take this as an opportunity to sort through what data I really need off of it (there is a lot of junk that has accumulated over the years), and then take your advice on formatting. Hopefully I can get it down to a reasonable file size to transfer at this speed.

If it seems to work ok, I might keep it for a bit, but I might just toss it. Since I bought the new internal HDD to replace it, I don't really need it any more, and if I want another external drive, I can just buy a USB 3.0 drive to replace it.

 

[lonewolf7]

If the warranty is over then you can open/break the caddy and can connect the drive directly to the MB. Maybe you will get better speed.

And external drives are not reliable so stick to internal ones. Good luck.

 

[fzabkar]

http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27290
http://malthus.zapto.org/viewtopic.php?t=557&p=1893#p1893