Transfer Rate: 2TB External Desktop HDD

[lasolov]

Hi All-

I purchased a WD Elements External HDD USB (2TB). When new, transfer rates from my PC internal HDD to the driver were decent. Then they slowed to a crawl.

For example, when new (02/10) backup of 80GB music collection took ~75 minutes using GoodSync. Couple of days ago it took 15 hours! Transfer rate hovered around 1MB/s.

System specs:

-Pentium 2.8GHz processor
-Physical Memory 1024 MB 533MHz 64 bit DIMM x 2
-USB 2.0 Intel 82801G (ICH7 family) with current driver

Drive is connected to PC using a standard USB 2.0 cable.

I downloaded the WD Lifeguard Diagnostics disk utility. SMART status indicated fail (re-allocated sectors) so I contacted WD tech support. Per tech, the utility does not work on drives over 1TB. The rep had me re-format the drive, creating a single, primary NTFS partition using quick format. I then scanned the drive for errors/bad sectors using XP chkdsk, HDTune Pro, IObit Advanced System Care. No bad sectors, no errors. I used Auslogics Defragmentation and PerfectDisk 11 to analyze disk for any fragmentation even though it contained no data yet. No fragmentation.

HDTune Pro indicates average transfer rate (read) is 51MB/s. I tried the write test but HDTune informed me I'd have to delete all partitions to do that.

So, what gives? 1MB/s is painfully slow! It used to be faster.

At one point in the past I backed-up my entire drive on my rickety (1GHz AMD CPU) laptop to this same drive at much faster rates. I don't think it's my system slowing it down.

Thank you!

 

[fzabkar]

Try a comprehensive SMART diagnostic. Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows / Linux):
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HDDScan for Windows:
http://hddscan.com/

Could we see HD Tune's performance graphs? If the access time graph shows many scattered data points, then this will be indicative of excessive read retries.

 

[lasolov]

Thanks for your reply fzabkar.

I downloaded both programs. Both diagnostic reports noted reallocated sectors.

I contacted WD tech support again. As it turns out their WD Lifeguard diagnostic utility DOES work on 2TB drives, contrary to what my first tech contact had said. So, all the diagnostic utilities I've run have been correct. The drive is damaged. WD issued an RMA. I'll be receiving a replacement drive in a few days.

I am still not sure what might have caused the failure. I've owned the drive since June 1st this year.

It's an external drive. I've taken it from home to work several times in a padded commuter bag. Perhaps damage occurred during handling?

In any case, thanks again.