Had this portable drive less than a year. Back in Nov, it acted up one day, slow to read or write files. I ran WD quick diagnostic tool but it froze around the 12 minute mark, so never completed. I turned it off for the holiday period, and fired it up in early Jan. Despite some strange side effects (sometimes all external drives ever connected to PC showed up greyed out in Windows Explorer), and after some sputters, I was able to access files and start the process of recovery, copying back to computer hard drive, although after a couple of hours, it slowed again.
Over the past weekend, it was really slow, taking around 6 mins to copy 30Mb files. And I get pop-up messages saying drive has to be formatted before use, and strangely, I’m finding Internet browsing freezes when drive is connected. Sometimes drive shows up as Local Disk (K:) in Windows Explorer, sometimes Elements (K:).
Now today, it’s slow to the point of frozen. It’s recognized by Windows 7 (eventually) when connected via USB, but I can’t access folders, just get the slow moving green bar across the top when clicking on it. I browsed some of the threads here, and did try to change the property in Device Manager to fast access instead of fast recognition (or whatever), but it made no difference. What does seem to help is letting it sit without power for days or weeks.
I’ve recovered around 1/5th of the stored content. Should I just persist slowly, waiting a week here or a month there, in the hope it just needs time to recover itself a little, or is there a better strategy? Is there some 3rd Party data recovery software product worth trying? Any advice welcome.
