WD20EARX (2TB CaviarGreen) very slow, only when downloading on it at more than 5-6 MB/s

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
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Hello !

There is something wrong with my WD20EARX 2 TB Caviar Green hard disk. Most of the time there is no problem, however, if I want to download stuff from the internet to my computer, to the partitions present on this hard disk, and the combined speed is over 5 MegaBytes per second, suddenly the disc becomes very slow, and makes the whole computer slow.

These are not torrents, these are private dropbox-like downloads to resynchronize local and remote backups, between 3 and 6 simultaneous transfers.

Edit : that was a useless mention, as I can also reproduce that problem with torrenting, I forgot to mention. Seems this isn’t related to the number of threads, but to the total speed.

Edit2 : I finished running the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics program, and neither the quick nor the extended scans found anything problematic : both cases were a PASS.

And, I am concerned, I don’t know if this kind of problems (no failures but extreme slowdown, happening only under relatively heavy load) will be even simply detected and reported by the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics program.

I already unplugged and replugged the disk’s SATA and power plugs, no difference

I’m running windows 7, the OS doesnt’ report any conflict or “!” issue in the peripherals manager

I tested downloading on other partitions of other hard disks (I have 3 SATA HDDs, plus 1 SSD), only the WD20EARX has that issue.

… and here, I’m lost. I can reproduce the problem (let’s download stuff !), but not fix it.

Please, would you have some advice for me, to find how to fix that issue ? Or at least how to debug it ?

I will be most grateful if you can help, thank you !

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The troubleshooting you have done is pretty extensive.

The only thing you have not try is different cables or motherboard.

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I’ll try that later today when I don’t need to be working on the computer, thank you John !

In the likelyhood the problem remains even after the disk has been tested with different cables, do you think that would be enough to apply for a warranty-covered exchange ? (As the disk is nearing one year of use if I remember right)

Testing with another motherboard would be an issue, though, as I don’t have any other desktop on which to do the testing :-/