My Passport mid 2008 REALLY slow

[Davidh373]

Alright, so I have a My Passport 250GB USB 2.0 hard drive and it just got really slow really fast. The only thing that has really changed is it's format. It was in FAT32 for a little while after being in NTFS for a long while and now I just went back to NTFS. I couldn't have the 4GB file size limit and it was also always popping up some warning message in Windows 7 for Windows to "Scan and Fix" the drive.

What happens is the drive will be fast as it used to be to start out (around50 MB/ sec.), and then it will creep down to 5MB/ sec.

For example, this transfer of a 4.95GB file has taken over 30 min. It seems to me that the format may be to blame. Do you think it doesn't support the 4MB allocation size, or maybe it's just a bad drive?

 

[razel]

That shouldn't happen with a large single ~5GB file. I'm assuming that when it was FAT32 there already files and now that you reformatted, it's now writing to space where data was sitting before. Perhaps that area where there was now has some bad sectors. Win7's 'scan and fix' maybe have been beginning to warn you about a possible issue.

The simplist, fastest way to check is to go back to FAT32. Copy that 5GB file and see if it happens. Another thing to check is the USB cable. Perhaps now it's frayed or worn? Otherwise, I do a SMART test or use Crystal Disk Info to see SMART values.

 

[Soundmanred]

Go back to FAT32. Copy that 5GB file and see if it happens.

I'm pretty sure it won't happen.

 

[Davidh373]

Me neither, but is that what quick format does? it still has data on it and it has to write over it?

Really, it's just a hard drive to transfer data between computers, so I could just format it w/o quick format checked.

 

[corkyg]

Haved you ever optimized the drive?

 

[Davidh373]

No. I don't even know how. Sounds interesting though. I'm going through the long formatting process now though. I'll let you guys know how it works. It didn't have problems coming from the drive, it's only data going to it, so hopefully this is a fix.

 

[Davidh373]

Alright. It was unable to complete the format. There was no error message, it just froze about 3/4s of the way in, and it seems to have frozen in the same spot twice. I let it hang for ~ 4 hours before I stopped it.
Do you guys think it's a bad drive? I know I probably should have mentioned this, but it has been damaged in the past. It's been dropped a few times, but it's lasted until now (~6 months) and has no visible external damage.
I have a replacement, I just have to get an enclosure for my Macbook Pro drive I just replaced with a higher capacity one.

 

[killster1]

if you dont care about the data you can always partition it and use part of the drive that works =P. I remember back in the day i did that, good luck tho best to just junk it or crack it open and hope the warranty on internal hd is still good. (most external have only 1 year warranty prob because people drop them so much hehe)

 

[Davidh373]

Yeah, i'll probably Just get a new one and an enclosure for my other one so I have 2. I've got money, so it's not a huge hassle for me to take a $60 hit for a 320GB HDD.

 

[Supersonic64]

First thing I do upon noticing any weird/different/odd performance from a hard drive is to run a back-up. This is assuming you don't regularly back up like you should...

 

[Davidh373]

I keep a constant back up in 3 places for important files, 2 for unimportant. I run storage for a production company, and I go to school for digital animation. I know how things can go on the fritz when you need them to work the most... I've lost many files for not having backups, not saving enough, ect... I learned the hard way like everyone has, or unfortunately will... Fortunately for me this is only a transfer drive. Nothing is stored or backed up on it.

 

[RebateMonger]

Do you guys think it's a bad drive?

Yes.

1) You've dropped it multiple times. Just a single drop (depending on height, orientation, landing surface, and power-on or power-off will often trash a disk.

2) It fails a FORMAT operation, freezing with no error message.

Have you looked at the Windows System Event Log to see if there are DISK or other disk-related errors?

For yuks, you might try running HDDScan (http://hddscan.com) against this disk. HDDScan will work on USB drives. It measures the time to access sectors across the disk and might help determine the cause of your poor disk performance.