[HeadRusch]

I have a Western Digital Black data drive that I've been using for 4 years or so, internal SATA II I believe (possibly 3, unsure to be honest)........1.5TB, used as a data drive. It recently began to show RED in Windows, indicating it was getting full. With about 20gb to spare I began to move stuff off it. Problem: Now it's slow as molasses.

I understand a drive needs some headroom to operate, so I deleted a bunch of stuff. The deletion took forever. As in overnight, into the next morning. The drive sounds a little off, but nothing physical happened to it. I removed it from the internal bay, plugged it into a USB 3.0 dock I own......and its still pig slow. Even trying to call up a directory (Click open on a folder) will cause my entire computer to pause for a moment, then pause again..its like the drive is running at pre-IDE speeds, endlessly playing catchup to whatever I am asking it to do. I've managed to get 800 gigs off the thing......and it's still pig slow.

Sometimes it is transferring at 4.5mbps, other times at 20mbps if the files are smaller...but nowhere near where it used to.

HDTune wouldn't even run properly....Western Digital Lifeguard tools errors out on my computer.

This one is a head-scratcher for me, and I'm fine zapping the drive once I've moved a few more things off it...slowly.......but the "WHY?" is stumping me. Thoughts?

Things I have considered:
I need to slap a jumper on the thing and try to reset it or force it into a master/slave mode directly.....err...if it lets me do that.......
It's been cursed
....???

If you have an opinion, feel free to share. Thanks!

 

[BusinessFace]

You could try CrystalDiskMark if you still feel like messing with it. I've seen many hard drives suddenly drop to hair-pulling performances, and if you can't even check it for errors or benchmark, just destroy it and use the magnets inside for a potholder mount or magnetic knife block.
Sometimes its better to save yourself frustration.

 

[guiltysoul]

HDD failure imminent I reckon.

 

[HeadRusch]

Yeah I had no intention of saving it, it's just nagging me why it suddenly decided to drop to snail speed....I've filled a hard drive before with no real issue.....

I also noticed it started running hot, 44c versus 31....and that was at idle.

 

[Scott Simonian]

Yeah, idk bud. I'd replace it before you lose everything.

 

[HeadRusch]

I took it out behind the barn.....we looked at the stars......then I did what had to be done. With a power drill.

 

[Scott Simonian]

It's in a better place now.

 

[moej]

Too bad I didn't see this sooner.
WD has software called "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic." You can do a full scan on the drive to look for anything bad or completely write it to zeros.
If your drive was empty, you could have done a full "write to zeros" and then a full test of the drive. If it passed, I would have kept it.


But who knows, it could have been on it's way out anyway.

 

[bd2003]

If it's been near full for a while your MFT might be super fragmented and it's difficult to defrag that....but it sounds like it's already too late lol.

 

[HeadRusch]

Data Lifeguard would shut itself down when I tried to access that drive. I decided that was a pretty good indicator to put the drill to it