My Book Essential: how should the drive test perform?

Hello, I’m doing a complete drive test on a WD My Book Essential 3.0 external HDD and I was just curious if anyone can tell me from personal experience how that drive test should normally perform?

I know that it should probably take a long time for a 2TB HDD, but I’m getting concerned because mine has been sitting at 10% complete for almost 40 minutes now and the little blue light on the drive stays solid and only blinks a couple times every few minutes. I would have thought that the drive test would be accessing it pretty hardcore and the light would flash continually while it was happening.

Just curious if this is normal as far as the light and how long it’s been at 10%?

FYI, the Quick SMART Test and Quick Drive Test both passed very quickly, but I thought I’d run the complete drive test too because I had never done it before and my drive is fairly old already (maybe 3+ years). 

Am I just being prematurely impatient or do you guys think this is out of the ordinary? Any advice if it is?

Thanks in advance!

Murphy’s Law! :stuck_out_tongue: Within a couple minutes of posting my question, the percentage of the drive test jumped to 20%! So I guess it is still working. Sheesh… I should’ve waited longer, sorry!

I would still like to know what the normal drive test should seem like if anyone thinks my experience so far isn’t normal.

A S.M.A.R.T. test should be completed in under a minute and a quick test in around 3-10 minutes. A full (Complete) test usually takes hours.

1 Like

Okay thanks, I guess all the tests ran as they should have then… the S.M.A.R.T. test and Quick Drive test both finished really, really fast. It was just the Complete/Full Drive test that had me wondering if something was wrong. It did eventually finish, but it took 6.5 hours. Maybe that is normal for a 2TB drive. 

Anyway, all is well I guess. No errors reported on the drive.