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Dropped external HD..it works but VERY SLOW

L

l Thomas l

Senior member
So I dropped my external HD. The case looks pretty intact except for one side. It looks like the hinges might of fallen off, cuz the other side snapped back into place, but this side didn't. Maybe the plastic hinges broke off and are inside the HD overheating and making everything slow? Haha I hope it's that simple.

It works, just VERY slowly. It makes the computer crawl to a stop. It takes about 10 minutes just to recognize it in explorer. I didn't even bother waiting for it to show how much space is available and taken on the drive. That was taking forever. It makes the computer very slow when it tries to access it. The computer speeds up again when I manually turn off the power on the external HD. Then it says the data wasn't able to be recovered blah blah blah.

I would try to format it if it didn't make the computer so slow while it tries to access it.

There's some stuff that's only on the external HD, but I'm willing to let it go. I need to get it fixed quickly or I'll just buy a new one.

Any suggestions? Thanks.
 
I tried it on two different computers.

This is what western digital diagnostic (lifeguard) says:
---------------------------
DLGDIAG for Windows
---------------------------
Quick Test on drive 2 did not complete!
Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 65 (Error Log Test)
SMART self-test did not complete on drive 2!
Click to expand...

it passes the "SMART Status" thing on the side, but fails on the quick test and shows that same message.

It won't say how much available and taken space there is, but it recognizes the full capacity. The green light looks like it's accessing the drive cuz it's flashing all the time while it slows down the computer.


It's a MyBook External 160GB drive btw.
 
lol yeah you're right.. I did the extended test to be sure, no way lol.. I'll make a new thread, but is there a good way to delete all the data on the drive even though it accesses it so slowly?
 
Originally posted by: l Thomas l
lol yeah you're right.. I did the extended test to be sure, no way lol.. I'll make a new thread, but is there a good way to delete all the data on the drive even though it accesses it so slowly?
Click to expand...

yep. take the hard drive apart, take the platters and shatter them with a sledgehammer. then take the pieces and spread them in different parts of the ocean. i doubt anyone would go so far to try and recover data from that. if the drive were working, DBAN would be the answer. since it's not...
 
Originally posted by: ForumMaster
Originally posted by: l Thomas l
lol yeah you're right.. I did the extended test to be sure, no way lol.. I'll make a new thread, but is there a good way to delete all the data on the drive even though it accesses it so slowly?
Click to expand...

yep. take the hard drive apart, take the platters and shatter them with a sledgehammer. then take the pieces and spread them in different parts of the ocean. i doubt anyone would go so far to try and recover data from that. if the drive were working, DBAN would be the answer. since it's not...
Click to expand...

Thermite would be quicker :evil:
 
I put it in another enclosure and now it passes the quick test. A lot of the files work now, but some of them wont open or copy over.

The extended test says "Stopped with too many errors!" Error is "08-Too many bad sectors detected !"

Do you think it would be fixed if I reformat it? I dont really care about the data.
 
The way I see it, one of two things likely happened when it was dropped.
The heads crashed into the platter in which case it is toast.
One of the circuit boards developed a break in a trace or two.
Easiest to try is remove the drive from the case and see how it operates just connected as another internal pc hard drive.
Maybe you can save your files.
 
Yeah get the data off that asap then just destroy the drive. Get the motor to spin at full speed while you hold a pair of scisors or other sharp object to the platter, slowly make your way from the center to the edge of the platter so you cover the whole thing (basically grinding off the data holding substance). Then try to do the same for rest of platters, in this case you're probably better off just smashing the rest though you want to ensure the substance is removed so once its smashed just scratch them up real good, maybe soak in an acidic solution or just use sandpaper or something on all platter surfaces.

At our office, we use a shot gun on old drives, works great too. (not inside the office obviously LOL)
 
I chkdsk'd it and it has 30MB of bad sectors lol. But now all the files work great. I'll probably get anything worth it off the drive then just delete everything, reformat, write zeros, then smash it with something lol. Thanks for all the help.
 
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