Amazingly I have never had a drive fail but think that I probably do now. I've dealt with other people's blown drives but haven't seen what I am with this one.

The drive is a 2 TB HDD partitioned to 2 1 TB partitions for data and system images. I thought that the September 2019 Windows Update was causing some issues on my system but some of the issues didn't match those reported. Here is what I'm seeing:

1) In my BIOS it is reported that S.M.A.R.T. is not available for the drive but a S.M.A.R.T. check with Seagate's Sea Tools reports it as OK.

2) Doing a basic drive test on all 6 of my drives show that all pass but the drive in question is just early in the first test when all other 5 are done. Still the drive does pass the tests.

3) I run everything from my taskbar through pinned folders in which shortcuts are grouped by type. These shortcut folders are on the data partition of the drive in question. It is taking 15-20 seconds for the shortcuts to populate.

4) Doing a full scan with MBAM Premium on the drive in question on the data partition which has 186 GB of used space. After running for almost 14.5 hours the scan is still not finished.

The drive is at least ten years old and I think just wearing out. Any other thoughts? I MAY try changing SATA ports just to rule out a flaky SATA port but I this is unlikely.

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Jay, You might find some useful info here:
https://www.easeus.com/storage-media-recovery/fix-a-slow-wd-external-hard-drive.html

Given the age of the drive and the possibility that it might be just wearing out, maybe you should copy all the data to a new drive before you continue trying to fix this one.

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

Thanks for the link BB. As to optimizing and checking the drive per the article it throws an error on either attempt. I think the controller is probably going.

Data isn't an issue as I sync all my data between two systems so my data drives are the same on both systems.

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It has been my experience, a few times in fact, that the HD is going. I would replace it as soon as possible.

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I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.

William A. Gustafson
I know I have forgotten more than I can ever hope to remember.

Ya, I already plan on replacing but not a major rush. I'll probably wait until after the first of the month. With how I backup it is just a flicker, not an issue. Even if the drive totally failed right now I would still have full access to all my data through my network to my second system which is totally synced as to data.

<edit>
Correction... I just ordered a Hitachi Ultrastar 2 TB SATA3 drive for $45.99 through Newegg.com. I like Hitachi drives even if they are now actually owned by Western Digital. Actually my 6 TB media drive is a Hitachi Deskstar. If I remember right my second system also has a couple of Hitachi Deskstars. The difference between a Deskstar and Ultrastar is that the Ultrastar series is rated as enterprise drives with a 2.0 million hours MTBF. MTBF stands for Mean Time Between Failures. I almost considered going with a 2 TB SSD but it's just a data/system image drive. $45.99 sounds a lot better to me than a couple hundred for an SSD.

Normally I'd setup the new drive by doing a clone but will just copy from my second system through my network. Normally a clone would be faster but the old drive is reading so slow that it is only showing read rates of 60-70 KB per second (at times even slower) when doing a file copy.

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New drive should show up Thursday. I'm a little nervous as this is a refurbished drive which is why I got a high level 2 TB drive for just $45.99. I've done refurbished/re-certified devices before including a 3 TB Hitachi Deskstar and 2 TB WD with great success but still worry about doing so with a drive. Being refurbished it does not carry a full warranty but does carry a one year warranty.

As to the other refurbished/re-certified devices I've tried my Asus laptop was a bit over $1000.00 new but I got it for $479.00 almost eight years ago. It is still running fine dual booting between Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 10 Pro. The other was my Belkin router which was priced at over $200.00 new. I paid ~$20.00 if I remember right. It has been running fine for what has to be well over two years. Dang, going through Newegg and Tiger Direct order histories I guess I've done a LOT of refurbished/re-certified. I also have an I5 Lenovo low profile system that I used as a second system before I built my current main system and my old main became my second.

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Purchasing a refurbished hard drive reminds me of when I was in high school and pretty much broke. When it came time to replace the tires on my old car, I decided to save some money and purchase retreads.

Then when I was in college and decided to get married, I fell in love with a divorced woman. That didn't last long either.

Later in life I decided that for important things like tires and wives, I was better off buying new. Both proved cheaper in the long run when doing so.

But I wish you luck on your retread hard drive.

EDIT: Any snow yet?

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

We have had light snow the last two nights but nothing that stuck.

As to retread hard drives all that I have are still up and running well after several years.

Something to remember about refurbished or re-certified devices is that original issues are fixed before they are put up for resale. Of course I'm taking a risk with this drive but probably no more of a risk than if I spent three times the price for a new drive of the same model. And, yes, it only carries a one year warranty. Still considering a one year warranty against a two million hour MTBF it is not a really big risk. If the drive makes it through its one year warranty it will probably last next to forever.

<edit>

I made some edits to the above as I got my drives mixed up and gave reference to the wrong drive failing.

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ARGG! I always forget that Newegg packages are actually delivered a day after the tracking date. Stuff is shipped UPS but the final delivery is through USPS. The tracking delivery date is actually delivery to the post office.

<edit>
Another Argg! I just looked over at my laptop desk and guess what I saw but forgot about... A little wood box with a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda sitting in it.

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Sigh, I just plain seem to be totally out of it on this hard drive deal.

I just checked my mail again and this time I noticed the key in my box to the larger parcel mailbox. The drive did show up today. Actually that is unusual with Newegg's free shipping as the stated delivery date is usually when it gets to the post office, not the actual delivery.

Then, a couple of post up, I reference a totally different drive than the one that seems to be failing. Actually the wrong drive I referenced and edited out of the post isn't even an internal but rather an external in an enclosure.

Then I find that I already had a spare 2 TB drive that I could have used. Actually this is not a bad thing and the spare 2 TB drive should have already been in use so I do have use for both drives. On my main system my data/system image drive (the failure) is a 2 TB drive but, on my second system, the drive that serves the same purpose is only 1 TB. This meant that I had to move the virtual hard drives for my six virtual machines to my second media drive as everything would not fit on the smaller drive mounted in my second system. Now the Hitachi will replace the bad drive in my main system and the Seagate Barracuda will replace the 1 TB drive in my second system. This will allow me to move the virtual hard drives back from my second media drive to my data partition. I guess it all works out in the end.

BTW, I still use the name Hitachi for the drives but the actual name since they were bought out is HGST. If you are ever looking for a drive I recommend these as Western Digital seems to have kept the standards set by Hitachi. Funny how my two favorite drive companies were both bought out by a larger company. Before I started using Hitachi/HGST I liked Maxtor which was bought out by Seagate. The difference is that WD kept the Hitachi line intact just changing the name while Seagate just seems to have absorbed Maxtor not maintaining the line.

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Drive swapped, speed issue gone, shortcut population normal and data in the process of being copied.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Even through my network connection the data transfer from my second system went quicker than I expected. 185 GB in something over an hour. I wish I had thought to actually time the transfer.

The added drive passed the short generic diagnostics through Seagate's Sea Tools without issue.

Here is a comparison of my SATA spin drives. This is not totally accurate as all other apps should be shut down but I had a browser window and my email client open. Still it should be good for comparison. I used Samsung's benchmarks for the test.

Seagate 4 TB:
Sequential read - 166 MB/sec.. Sequential write - 123 MB/sec..

HGST 6 TB (Hitachi Deskstar):
Sequential read - 135 MB/sec.. Sequential write - 136 MB/sec..

Hitachi Ultra star (new drive) 2 TB:
Sequential read - 153 MB/sec.. Sequential write - 153 MB/sec..

What makes the Hitachi/HGST drives stand out is that the write speeds are next to exactly the same as the read speeds. Yes, the Seagate shows the fastest read rate but it also has the slowest write rate.

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I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.

William A. Gustafson
I know I have forgotten more than I can ever hope to remember.

Me too Bill.

The slowdown on the original drive must have been gradual as I didn't really notice until toward the end when it started to take forever for my app shortcuts to populate their folders.

With hindsight, after mounting the new drive, the difference is obvious. Syncing my data to my second system is now MUCH quicker as is doing a system image. Both are on different partitions of the same drive. I say it must have been a gradual failure as I never noticed the time increase on such stuff which I would have if it had been a quick change.

I know it is just about impossible to diagnose things like this but you have dealt with a lot of hardware as have I. My guess on the old drive is either a cache or controller issue. I don't think the issue was mechanical such as a bearing or sectors failing as I never lost any data and the drive would pass diagnostic test. Took a long time but it would pass. I also can't see a bad spin motor as, if the drive started spinning at more than around 5%... mayhaps even up to 10%... speed loss, old data written with a proper spin speed would have been broken as an under-speed drive will see sectors written at the proper speed as bad. I guess it is possible that the read/write heads stepping motor could be bad causing a lot of read/write errors resulting in an apparent slow down but seriously doubt that as a real possibility.

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Finally got around to re-doing my second system in regards to the drive changes and all is done and fine. Once again I messed up though. I just haven't seemed to be quite together on all this. In fact I probably threw away a perfectly good 2 TB drive.

Since my data partition on the second system was only half a TB I was looking for a 1 TB drive that served the same purpose as the 2 TB drive on my main system holding data and system images. So I find a 1 TB drive on my second system that does hold the data partition and replace with the 2 TB drive I had laying around. The system would not boot so I figured the 2 TB drive was bad and causing the issue so I pitched the thing.

I put back the original drive back in and all was fine. So then I order another of the Hitachi refurbished drives and mounted the thing. System would not boot. What the Heck!?!? Hook up the original drive again and all is fine...

DUH!! I finally took a good look at Drive Management and it turns out that both my data and OS were on the 1 TB drive so when I removed the danged thing of course the system wouldn't boot as there was no boot drive.

The actual setup was the 1 TB drive partitioned for OS and data. It gets worse... The drive that was actually getting the system images is a 3 TB drive. All I ever needed to do was to re-partition the 3 TB drive to hold both data and images as is the case on my 2 TB drive on my main system. It has just been so long since I've really done anything with the second system that I expected and looked for the same setup as my main system.

Still it did not turn out bad. I did replace the system image 3 TB drive on the second system with the new refurbished Hitachi 2 TB drive and all is well with data migrated and an image done and I have a perfectly good 3 TB drive to play with. Threw the 3 TB drive in a drive dock and connected to my main system. I partitioned it to three 1 TB sections and it is now to be used for external system images for both my desktops and laptop with a partition dedicated for each.

All this hoopla is an example of one knowing enough to mess up oneself. Shoot, I build my own systems so it is obvious I know at least a bit about setting up drives. The thing is that I assumed how things were on the second system instead of really checking. It has been a LONG time since I've really done anything with the second system and looked at it as the same drive setup as my main. Obviously that was not the case.

Bottom line is that I did not follow one of my old time rules from when I was a machinist; Measure twice and cut once.

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That must have been frustrating! Good lesson, though.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

LOL! Less frustrating and more feeling dumb.

Actually not much loss. The 2 TB drive I pitched was pretty old so I really don't if it would have been good or not. The three TB drive is now being put to better use as an external Image drive.

To be honest I thought the whole thing pretty funny.

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Glad to hear you've got it all sorted and you can laugh about it now.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com