External Hard Drive Suddenly Becomes Slow :( -Help Needed

Hi, folks

My Buffalo external hd has been with me for almost three years already and I am very satisfied with the performance. However, recently, my buffalo external hd suddenly becomes slow in opening programmes and folders. Sometimes, there are lag times saying that a folders or programmes are not responding so I have to click on the task manager and pick end task to quit the programme. I don't know what seems to be the problem.

Here are some possible reasons that caused the slow performance of my HD, kindly just validate it:

(1) My notebook has just 40GB of internal hard drive memory, so I use my external HD to run my games like playing, DOTA, Torchlight, Plants vs Zombies for long hours;

(2) At times, there are also instances of power shut downs where my notebook shuts downs with the external HD still plugged;

(3) Last two days, I somehow used my external HD like a flash or thumb drive. I think I plugged and unplugged it for 10 consecutive times in 30 mins cos I was accessing some folders in it considering my notebook has only two usb ports. I use one for the mouse, and the remaining one, and I alternate my external HD and celphone usb connector.

(4) Although this happens rarely, I sometimes unplug my external HD even it says that there are still applications running so it can't be unplugged yet.

AMong these 4, what could possibly caused the slow performance of my external HD? And how can i remedy it? many thanks to everyone.

 

How much space are you using on the external?

 

I am using 109GB of 232GB

 

Any updates regarding my case, guys?

 

So what seems to be the problem of my Buffalo External HD?

 

Could be a whole lot of things...
1. The internal controller for the usb inside the external hard drive casing.
2. Could be the fact you've hit 100gb out of 200gb, which means your performance will decrease.. The more full a hard drive is the slower it will be, as the data is written on a disk. It starts in the inner most edge (faster access because of smaller size), and ends at the outer edges of the disk (slower performance, as you need to travel more distance).

Does your external hard drive click consistently? Do you move it around when you use it? Please give us as much information as you can.

 

My hard drive is just stationary at home. I don't bring it with me 'cause I am quite paranoid that I might break it. Although one day, I asked my younger brother to bring it with him to school 'cause I need some files to access there. As far as I know as I have instructed him, he took good care of it. That's just plainly it. Aside from that, I don't remember bringing it with me

 

What do you mean by "does your external hard drive click consistently"?

 

Does it make random clicking sounds for a 3 or more seconds?

 

First thing to do is run a chkdsk /f on your external hard drive from the Dos prompt to see if it picks up any errors.

I had a buffalo hard drive that was giving me similar problems and I was just about to send it back when I decided to open it up and place the hard drive into a different external USB case. It turned out that the problem was just the buffalo USB / sata adapter and in the new case everything worked just fine.

 

-so you suggest i switch my buffalo hd to a new external HD case?

 

i think that doesn't happen. What only happens is that sometimes when I am clicking a file to copy or paste, or folder to open, suddenly, things freeze and it would say that it's not responding. Then I would close it then everything is back to normal then things happen again if I do multi-tasking. If the copying or pasting is successful, it takes alot of time to copy and paste files as big as 700mb and above when it wasn't like that before.

 

If a chkdsk /f turns up no errors then switching it to a new case is an option unless it is still under warranty.

 

Yeah could be the USB controller on the buffalo enclosure.
Buy a new enclosure that will fit yours and swap the hard drive.

Sounds to me that the hard drive inside is having it's head parked constantly by the controller.

 

Could fragmentation be a problem here?

I know consolidating free space is great for a DATA drive... but it might be the problem here.

 

-Okay, thanks a lot, LaptoppNut. I will try your suggestion ASAP

 

I tried defragmenting it but there was no problem at all, still transferring rate (copy and pasting) take long; plus, it lags alot. By the way, nice profile pic over there. Is that a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck?

 

Hmm, too bad

And yes, it is a Meisterstück - P146 to name the exact model

 

Did you do a chkdsk /f yet.

 

-Not yet. I believe there are no risks of erasing my data in my HD if I do chkdsk, right?

 

chkdsk /f will not do any damage, it will just need full access to your hard drive and will check it for any errors and then report back if anything is wrong. You can also run it in read only mode but that is less accurate since other programs may be writing to it at the same time which can give false results.

 

-i will be doing that asap but i tried though the right-clicking of my external drive, clicked properties >tools >error-checking >checked automatically fix file system errors and >scan for attempt recovery of bad sectors. After that loaded, no errors or bad sectors were found. Apparently, everything seems to be fine. Will that procedure suffice already and could be a substitute for the chkdsk you were recommending me to do? Thanks a lot

 

I just bought an empty external HD metal case and tried putting my Buffalo there. I gave it a try. Unfortunately, I experienced the same slowness of transfer rates and can't play the installed games in my external HD like DOTA and Torchlight... I guess it's my laptop's internal HD since it's still IDE and my external HD is sata... But before it even my notebook is using an IDE HD, my Buffalo external HD works perfectly... I don't remember dropping my external HD either... I am left now clueless..

 

Maybe files where shuffled from the fast part of the drive to the slower parts?
I guess you connect via USB, is the port still running at the speed it should?

Alternatively - could you not upgrade the internal HDD? - They still make IDE drives - WD does anyway.

 

-Actually, I am planning to upgrade my internal HDD to Seagate cos my current internal HDD is Samsung and has only 40GB of memory. Still saving up for that... "Maybe files where shuffled from the fast part of the drive to the slower parts?" - What do you mean by this? For your second question, I didn't notice any transfer rates via USB since I only copy document and pictures. I will try to copy big files and observe the transfer rates as well Thanks for the advice

 

People used to partition HDDs because some parts of the discs where faster than other's.

I believe the "inner part" is faster than the "outer part".
HDDs are physical discs - just like a CD.

 

What do I do now?

 

Good question.

On that note - my external feels slow too for some reason - but it's just storage, so not really important - and I'm moving stuff to my Home Server anyway.


I suppose if you have a second drive you could try to move everything over - then change the drive letter for the new drive to what the old one had...

Riskier - if you have free space - shrink the HDD - and do the above by having 2 or 3 partitions on it...

I suppose if you want to run software from an external drive 2 partitions make sense.

Or - get a new internal drive... that's possibly the easiest option really... at least it's reasonably failproof.

 

Install Seatools for Windows and run disc check for your drive(s).
| Seagate

If it says you have a drive gone bad, replace it.

 

Or - get a new internal drive... that's possibly the easiest option really... at least it's reasonably failproof.[/QUOTE]

I guess this is the best option but the most costly one...

 

My Buffalo's HD is seagate, will that app still work even my internal HD is IDE?

 

No way to tell unless you try really.

 

As it says on the website, SeaTools for Windows tests PATA/SATA, USB, 1394, and SCSI drives. So the answer is yes.

It will also do basic tests on non-seagate drives, you will have answer if drive is good or bad.

 

Ok, I will try this ASAP. Btw, do I have to do some back-ups or something just in case of emergency situations?

 

Backups are meant to be taken regularly before emergencies actually happen. So yes, you should do them

 

Ok, will do that ASAP even it's quite tedious 'cos it really takes time to transfer big files to another storage hehe

 

It will only be tedious if you do all of the work yourself. Instead you should use a program like Acronis True Image and do a complete backup onto another big drive.

 

Which requires you to have a same sized drive - or larger drive.
The advantage of manually moving files is also that they get defragmented by doing so.

 

Really? I didn't know that. How's that suppose to happen? I mean the process of manually moving the files is already defragmentation itself? Thanks for the info

 

If you move a file from drive A to drive B it basically reads the file from drive A - even if fragmented - and writes the file newly to drive B in one go.

Something I didn't mention - drive B needs to be either empty or be filled continuously.
But basically the computer will try to fill the drive up from "top to bottom" - fragmentation occurs because it uses gaps that occur with time or files outgrow their space.

 

Upon doing back-up, I encouter IO error :'( it said that I can't access my hard drive due to this error. When I unplug my external HD, it always asks for scan ad fix file problems (recommended) and continue w/o scanning.n Although it took some time, I chose the scan and fix problems and finished it. WHen I started copying files and folders again to back-up my external HD, it was still very slow; plus, on the verge of completing a file transfer, I encounter the IO error again Is there any software you can refer or I can download to fix this problem? Is there still a solution to remedy my external HD's case? I have like 200GB of important files and documents there. I really need help on this guys :'( Thanks a lot...

 

I guess I couldn't do anything anymore with the IO device error popping out every time I copy from my external HD to my notebook to back-up my files. I was able to salvage a fair few and lost the others in the process. What I did, I just reformatted my external HD (Buffalo). Now, it's all good like brand new, but all the features of Buffalo (i.e. turbo speed file transfer, back-up recovery installer, etc.) were all deleted upon reformat. Does this really happen? I mean, do all external HDs like WD, Seagate, Samsung have also some sort of programmes pre-installed inside upon purchase and get deleted upon reformat? Thanks, guys

 

Yes - because any program is just data on the HDD.

Check the manufacturer's site for an update?
Alternatively - do you really need them? I've not used the software that came either with my WD Passport or the FreeAgent Go - got them both though stashed away the installer

 

That software would have been hidden on the HDD, to back it up you would just need to unhide it, copy it and then put it back after the reformat. Not all HDD similar to the Bufalo have it. I tend to steer clear of all of that sort of stuff though.

 

Hidden? So you mean I'll try viewing the hidden files and folders before going to the Buffalo site and have my external hdd updated? Btw, what external hdd brand could you recommend? From what happened, I guess I won't be buying any Buffalo products anymore...

 

No, I mean if you get one of those drives new, you can usually copy over those special hidden files as a backup before you do anything, but since you formatted the drive already they are of course gone. I don't know if you can get another copy from their homepage or not.

The external HDD's I use are the basic 500GB 2.5 Laptop internal HDD's such as Western Digital, Samsung or Seagate installed into an external case although I have had no issues with my 2.5 LG and my Freecom one. I did have problems with my Buffalo one but that was mostly caused by the electronics inside of the case as opposed to the actual hard drive.

 

-why is that Buffalo seems to always have some problems? I bought a Buffalo wifi port but there are no problems so far...