External hard drive extremely slow

[octaz]

Hello

So i bought a 2 tb external seagate hard drive... uploaded some files from a laptop using windows xp.

Now, after months of not using the external, i'm trying to get the files off on a windows 7 pc, but, low and behold, the files are pretty much unusable because of an extremely slow responding external hard drive.

My whole computer would essentially freeze when trying to open any file.

So i assumed that the problem was the external hard drive, and that it had broken somehow and I was screwed. But if I attempted transferring the files onto the computer, it would work, but at a ridiculously slow transfer rate of around 10 kilobytes a second.

But the files work after they transfer, which takes hours.

I figure it would take me about a month leaving my pc on to transfer all these files.

Anybody know what is up with that? and is it safe to leave my pc on that long?

thanks for the advice

 

[Steltek]

Sounds like the interface has dropped back to USB1.1. Have you tried plugging the drive in to another USB port on the machine? Also, have you tried to access the external drive on another Win7 machine to ensure that it isn't a just problem with your computer? It is possible for this sort of problem to happen on a machine if a USB controller fails.

You might also check device manager to see if you have any yellow exclamation points on any of the USB controllers or hubs.