WD Elements 2TB reads and writes extremely slowly

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for Windows
1

Hello,

I have a very simple WD Elements 2TB which you just plug in and use.
Recently, it became very slow. It used to be very quick with everything.
It’s approximately 900 GB full and 900GB free.

So I didn’t touch it for a month. Previously I used to copy a lot of TV show episodes on it at the same time. This time I decided to copy a 24 GB folder full of music and it couldn’t cope with that, so I hit the cancel button. Later I managed to delete the half-loaded folder from WD, but now it reads and writes slowly. I used Windows tools like Error-checking and later I defragmented it. After defragmentation you can open folders as fast as it used to, but If I try to copy sth from it on my PC or watch a movie it would lag. Oh, and after safely ejecting it and reconnecting it would open folders slowly again until you run defragmentation again. I did run a disk space cleaner as well.

I would like you to help me. Formatting disk is not an option as besides TV shows I have important documents and family photos there.

Thank you.

2

Your unit may be showing early signs of hardware failure, and/or bad sectors. I’d recommend replacing your unit’s USB cable and running a diagnostic test using Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. If it fails any test then it should be replaced under warranty.

http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=940

If the unit passes all tests then you may have to reformat it in order to discard volume access issues.

I would also strongly recommend keeping a backup. All hard drives eventually fail. Some of them with no warning signs.