Harddrive issue.

[Bunnykillah]

About a month back I got a WD 640GB SATA drive to hold all my tv shows and what not that I save. Earlier this week after dumping about 20 gigs of Bleach into it I noticed that it would lag horribly when reading any of the files on it. I could transfer files to the drive with no problem, but if I wanted to play the files or retrieve them it would start reading them at maybe 30mb/s and drop to like 9mb/s and after a few seconds just halt and time out all together. I was quick to blame vista for this problem but my other 2 drives do not have this issue. I tried changing the sata port that the drive was hooked to and that didn't help.

I will probably just end up reformatting the drive to see if that helps. Just wondering if anyone has had a problem like this and maybe knew a solution. While I would not like to lose all my shows, they are not that valuable to me where I cant just re-download them. I checked the read/write permissions and they seem to be in order. Any ideas?

[Cephius]

Slow read speeds can indicate a failing drive. I would run some diagnostics on it, do a chkdsk, and see if everything comes back normal. Does the drive make any clicking noises when it's reading? That would be another sure-fire way to see if it's failing or not. If it's just a month old, now would be the time to get WD to replace it.

To be thorough though, try plugging that drive into another PC if you have it available and see if it still suffers from the same performance issues.

[Crowort]

Have you tried seeing how fragmented the drive is? It really shouldn't be too bad, but worth looking into I'd say.

NVM that reread and my advice doesn't match your problem

[Bunnykillah]

Sorry for delay, classes all morning. So I ran chkdsk on it and at stage 4 of 5 it seemed to halt at 10% and even getting to that 10% took a while. So it seems like the drive has failed. Kind of annoying because I just got this drive because the one before it failed as well. Although that one did click and you could hear it power up/down at random points. It also liked to freeze the pc when it would do that.

Anyone had to experience returning a drive to WD? Newegg says it has a 3 year warranty.

[Isiolia]

Go here http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index_end.asp?lang=en plug in your serial number to check warranty/request an RMA/etc.

The main annoyance I've had with some of those is that they don't tend to send you a box n' such. At least, IBM never did when I RMA'ed Deathstars.

[Norellicus]

Go here http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index_end.asp?lang=en plug in your serial number to check warranty/request an RMA/etc.

The main annoyance I've had with some of those is that they don't tend to send you a box n' such. At least, IBM never did when I RMA'ed Deathstars.

Most companies will send you a box (technically) if you do their advanced RMA to get the drive first; requires a credit card. They don't charge you anything as long as you send the old drive back. Every RMA I've ever had to do this way has been smooth, and getting the new drive in advance made data recovery super easy.

Worth a shot, at least.

[Resin]

Go here http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index_end.asp?lang=en plug in your serial number to check warranty/request an RMA/etc.

The main annoyance I've had with some of those is that they don't tend to send you a box n' such. At least, IBM never did when I RMA'ed Deathstars.

^ Do what he says. WD's RMA process is great. I recently had to RMA a Raptor that developed bad sectors and the entire thing was painless. I used a credit card to expedite the process, but if you can live without a drive for a few days you won't need it. Just follow all the instructions carefully and you should be good to go.