HDD suddenly awfully slow?

[leomendes801]

Hi, my name is Leo.

I've had this 1TB HDD for about 2-3 years now, and I use it mainly for file storage. I am a filmmaker and I have loads of video files. That's why I decided to organize them into a separate hard drive, leaving more space on my main HDD, which I use mainly for installing programs, games, etc.
Yesterday I was going through some not so old files that I've put in that specific hard drive and I realized that most of them were corrupt. The video quality was terrible (which they aren't originally), and some of them would freeze in the middle of playback. This was strange enough already, but then I realized that sometimes my hard drive unit wouldn't even appear on my computer. I don't know if it's automatically disconnecting or something, but it's really getting in the way of my work.
Now I have more filming data that I need to copy into this hard drive but I can't because it's taking literally 50 minutes to copy 13GB worth of video clips.

Can you guys help me out with this one?

Rig: Intel Core i5-2320 @ 3.00GHz, ASUS P8H67-V, 24GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 760 2GB

 

[DR_Luke]

Can you provide more details about the hard drive, such as the full model? Also, are you working within Apple or Windows environments? While we are at it, what kind of value does the data have? That is, is it worth seeking professional data recovery assistance before further damage is caused?

 

[leomendes801]

Can you provide more details about the hard drive, such as the full model? Also, are you working within Apple or Windows environments? While we are at it, what kind of value does the data have? That is, is it worth seeking professional data recovery assistance before further damage is caused?

Thanks for the quick reply, Luke.
The full model name of my hard drive is ST2000DM001-1CH164 ATA, if I'm correct. And I work on a Windows environment. Windows 10 to be exact.
Well, I do have lots of files that were used or are still being used for the making of music videos, commercials, etc. for my clients. So I wouldn't say they could be wasted. And I have no backup, by the way. That's why I'm worried it'll get worse.
Sorry for the lack of information!

 

[SkyNetRising]

Can you guys help me out with this one?

Check health of your hard drive. Use HDtune health, post screenshot.

 

[DR_Luke]

Based on a search of your drive on my data recovery forum logging seagate hard drive failures, it seems like your symptoms best fit with at least 1 read/write head starting to fail. If you are lucky, a professional data recovery lab will be able to stabilize the drive and safely recover all your files without a head change, though it is possible that a head change will be needed.

A few trustworthy and affordable labs I recommend are:

Recovery Force
Data Medics
Data Savers
PC Image
Data Busters
Mind Merge

In theory, the price range for such a recovery can be anywhere from about $300 USD to about $1500 USD.

 

[leomendes801]

Can you guys help me out with this one?

Check health of your hard drive. Use HDtune health, post screenshot.

Here are the screenshots (I also did a disk scan):

 

[SkyNetRising]

Health looks perfect. I don't see any problems there.

One thing though - power on hours are 287days (6889h), but start/stop count 3253.
So you're starting/stopping your drive more than 10 times per day?
That causes additional wear. Not advisable.

 

[DR_Luke]

Unless you scanned the entire drive, which you definitely did not do in 9:55, you cannot be sure about the condition of the media. If a head is starting to fail, it usually reads the first several percent of the drive...I've seen as far as 10% before it starts to show some read errors. That said, I would have expected to see some errors reported within SMART.

Play it safe and get a full sector-by-sector clone, if you can. These drives are crap and you are likely on borrowed time, anyway.