I bought a brand-new WD Elements 5TB (WDBU6Y0050BBK-WESN). For the first 8 months of use, it seemed to work fine. Then it started corrupting my video files whenever I reorganized them into different folders (that is, when moving them to another location on the same drive). I generally work with files up to 10 GB each.
The corrupted files become something like “ghost files”: their size changes to 0 bytes, and they can no longer be opened.
This only happens when I move files within the drive. I have tried copying new files to the drive, reading existing files, and copying them back to my computer, and all of those operations work just fine.
ABOUT THE DRIVE
*It was brand new and had never been used before I bought it.
*It has never been dropped or hit.
*Within five months, I had filled it almost completely, with nearly 5 TB of data, leaving only about 20 GB of free space.
*I always use the Safely Remove Hardware function in Windows 11. The drive has never been disconnected while files were being copied or read.
*I only use this drive about twice in a week to copy new files, then I leave it, it serves only as storage for my important videos. NO INTENSIVE USAGE
*Windows 11 o Crystal Disk never found any error on the drive.
PLEASE, I NEED HELP. I DONT HAVE MONEY TO BUY A NEW DRIVE RIGHT NOW.
I have seen some WD Elements disks and evidently these are rather unreliable. I have many USB enclosures and prefer to use generic disks as these use standard controller logic and seem to be trouble free unlike WD element products.
3.5" SATA 4TB hard disks are not very expensive and a cheap USB enclosure is $19 postage paid. I use the low cost box but I have larger capacity disks.
You are absolutely right. I have some generic disks, I use them to exhaustion, I never got any issue with them. From now on, I will never buy external drives again.
I have seen many issues here and I had one in my shop to attempt recovery. I was able to get files off the unit but the retry counts were high. The error rates suggest the disk platters were weak or needed to be zeroed to attempt to refresh it. I tried zero wipe and it still had a bad error rate was still really bad.
First, back up your data immediately (copy to another drive, don’t move!). Run WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to check drive health, then use chkdsk /f /r X: (replace X with your drive letter) to fix file system errors. You can also follow guides on how to fix 0 bytes file to recover those ghost files. Try a different USB cable/port, and avoid moving large files within the drive until resolved—copy then delete instead. If problems persist, the drive’s controller might be failing, so consider warranty support.
Moving files within the same drive mostly updates file system records, so files becoming 0 bytes points to file system corruption or a failing drive even if CrystalDiskInfo looks normal. Stop moving files, back up anything important while it is still readable, free up more space, then run chkdsk X: /scan. Also try another USB cable and port.
