WWD 12TB Gold's tranfer rate dropped suddenly

Internal Drives WD Gold
1

I have had a 12TB WD Gold drive in a USB3.2 external case for quite a while. My normal transfer rate when copying file in Windows is about 230MB per second. For some reason the drive’s transfer rate has dropped to a consistent 30MB per second. I thought it might be the external housing or cable but putting another drive in it, this time a 10TB of the same ilk, and the transfer rate is back up to the expected normal of about 230MB per second. Putting this questionable drive in another computer on a SATA connector produces the same low 30MB per second transfer rate.

I’ve deleted partitions and reformatted the offending drive but the results are always the same. Is there anything I can do to restore the performance of this drive or is it time to dispose of it? Note: It is out of warranty.

Thank you for your thoughts!

2

Can you show us a SMART report?

https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki/index/smart/

3

Thanks. I will try that and report back.

4

I used CrystalDiskInfo and got a bad report regarding the drive’s “Helium Level”. Nothing can be done about it I guess and I am not sure that would contribute to a performance loss. Thanks for the suggestion!

CrystalDiskInfo_20241214090055
CrystalDiskInfo_20241214090055674×780 43.6 KB

5

Thanks for sharing. It helps me a lot.

6

That’s strange. It suggests that your data is still accessible in an air environment.

7

It is available but at about a tenth the normal data rate. I moved the data off this disk and may disassemble it to see what cool things are inside. Thanks for the SMART tip!

8

Get a new hard disk as the helium level is almost zilch.

1 Like
9

Roger that! The insides of the drive are pretty cool!