Cannot copy large files from 1tb Hard disk (pc)

HI, I am new to the forum.

I have two 1tb external hard drives.  I use one for watching movies and general storage and the other as a backup for this drive.  So every now and again I format the backup drive and recopy everything directly onto the backup drive to keep it up to date.  So I have been trying to do this again now, Formatted (NTFS) then tried to drag everything over to start the copy, I get the preparing to to copy box and then nothing happens? I have tried this again and again, after restarts, changing usb ports etc?

I can drag the small files over (10-80gb), and even got one of the larger ones over (300gb) but cannot get the other large ones to start copying at all (also around 300gb), I mostly dont even get the preparing to copy dialog box and it just does nothing.  Doesn’t hang or crash. I tried dragging and dropping, copy n paste, directly to hard disk to hard disk and also to my computer.  This takes a day and a night normally to copy everything and I just dont have the time or patients to copy over 10gb’s at a time, especially as I know I have done this before and this even worked once this time for the 300+gb transfer.  This is soooo annoying and I now dont have my backup so dont want t do anything that will risk my originals.  I am pulling my hair out with no idea what to try next?

Has anyone experienced this before?  Please help if you know a solution. 

Thanks.

Hello,

Just for troubleshooting purposes I recommend that you try to copy the files on another computer and if possible also try another USB cable.

You may also run a diagnostic on your drive using Western Digital’s Data Lifeguard Diagnostics tool.