WD My Passport Ultra 082A - Freezing Programs That Access It and more..

[clearfork4pk1ng]

Recently my portable WD Passport (Plugged in via USB 3.0 was giving me problems when listening to music or watching movies off of it. Playing music on any music player is causing the music to skip and the movies are freezing on every movie player i have.

My computer was running slow so i decided to use Auslogic to defrag my drives. Primary C drive and seconday D drive defragged just fine. When i went to select my passport it froze auslogic. I was unable to force close it through task manager via processes. I unplugged the drive and everything went back to normal.

Booting Windows when the drive is plugged in causes it to hang with a black screen and it wont proceed to the login screen. When unplugged it fires up as if there was no problem at all. (This drive hasn't ever had windows files on it and still currently does not. It only holds personal valuable pictures, movies, and music.

When plugging in the drive it takes a couple of minutes to detect it. I am able to navigate everything on it and access everything on it HOWEVER. It causes anything that uses it to respond extremely slow.

I attempted to use CrystalDisk to see if the drive was failing and it would launch the process but wouldnt visually launch the program until i unplug the drive.

When attempting to move even a small picture off of the drive it sits on discovering files for a while then just closes off the explorer without errors. Few times when it actually discovers the file(s) im attempting to move off of the drive it doesn't transfer. It sits a 0% and refuses to move.

I have attempted to:
- Defrag the drive - Both Auslogic and Built in Windows Defragger Froze until drive was unplugged
- ChkDsk - was unable to access the drive
- Uninstalling the drive - Persists when reinstalled
- Updating drivers - All are up to date. Everything from USB drivers to my Video Drivers
- Assigned it a proper drive letter.
- Checking bios for legacy mode
- Ensured that it was last in boot order.
- Tried a different cable
- Tried moving everything off one file at a time. - Unable to move even a single picture
- Formatting ( As much as i dont want to do this. It froze my explorer and i had to force close it)
- Check drive with CrystalDisk - Froze the program. Would physically launch but wouldnt visually launch until i unplugged the drive.
-Attempted to use PowerISO to make a virtual image of the drive for formatting - Froze the program

All of issues with freezing and slow performance are solved when i unplug the drive. I really dont wanna format the thing without moving my kids pictures off of it a the least.

Im am currently using

Windows 7 x64 Ultimate Edition
12GB Ram
x2 1TB WD Black Edition Internal HDD
XFX R9 280X 3GB
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 rev 4.0
AMD FX8350
Corsair 650w Builder Series

Western Digital My Passport 082A

If any additional information is needed feel free to ask.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there clearfork4pk1ng,

That is really unpleasant. 🙁

From all the things you've tried, it looks like the HDD is failing. Yeah, even if the failing drive is a secondary one, or an external as in this case, it could affect the overall system perfromance. You've tried it on another computer right?

As you have some important data stored on it and taking into account that OS tools can't really access the drive, then I want to say that your safest bet would be to contact a data recovery company. You can check WD's Data Recovery Partners out: https://support.wdc.com/warranty/datarecovery.aspx

If you don't really want to with that option, then you can see if the drive would be accessible under Ubuntu. Sometimes, Ubuntu handles failing drives better. You will need a CD or a flash drive, so you can boot (just boot, don't install it) from it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode
Once you do that, you can navigate to the drive. If it is accessible, back up the data stored on it ASAP.

Apart from all this, you need to keep in mind that mechanical drives could sometimes just fail, without showing any warning sign before that. This is why, you need to back up the data you can't afford to loose.
Another thing is that, processes like: defragging, disk check, etc., are HDD intensive ones. So, if you think that there is something wrong with your HDD, it may be a better idea to try running some data recovery tools first.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[clearfork4pk1ng]

Hi there clearfork4pk1ng,

That is really unpleasant. 🙁

From all the things you've tried, it looks like the HDD is failing. Yeah, even if the failing drive is a secondary one, or an external as in this case, it could affect the overall system perfromance. You've tried it on another computer right?

As you have some important data stored on it and taking into account that OS tools can't really access the drive, then I want to say that your safest bet would be to contact a data recovery company. You can check WD's Data Recovery Partners out: https://support.wdc.com/warranty/datarecovery.aspx

If you don't really want to with that option, then you can see if the drive would be accessible under Ubuntu. Sometimes, Ubuntu handles failing drives better. You will need a CD or a flash drive, so you can boot (just boot, don't install it) from it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode
Once you do that, you can navigate to the drive. If it is accessible, back up the data stored on it ASAP.

Apart from all this, you need to keep in mind that mechanical drives could sometimes just fail, without showing any warning sign before that. This is why, you need to back up the data you can't afford to loose.
Another thing is that, processes like: defragging, disk check, etc., are HDD intensive ones. So, if you think that there is something wrong with your HDD, it may be a better idea to try running some data recovery tools first.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

As of yesterday i've been 100% unable to access the drive due to an I/O Error. I'll give unbuntu a try and see what happens. Thanks in advance

 

[D_Know_WD]

Unfortunately, that's not a really good sign. Anyway, let us see what happens with Ubuntu.

D_Know_WD