HDD is able to be seen on Windows, transferring data...not so much

[Coincidal]

So I have a 1TB external WD my passport ultra (it's blue), that I think was dropped at some point, but Im not entirely sure. It is maybe 2-3 years old. And has been in storage for a while. Well I went to get some of my honeymoon pictures off of it, and it not acting as expected. Some folders take 10-15 minutes to load even if there is only a few files in there. Some just cause windows explorer to stop responding and crash. When in the root of the drive and attempting to xfer a 1gb folder of pictures, it starts to transfer at around 350kb/sec then drops to 0, then maybe to 10kb/sec back to 350kb/sec then 0 kb/sec. This is all via USB3.0 (I am using usb 3.1gen1 port off my motherboard, but the drive is only rated for usb3). The time remaining for the 1gb folder is just over an hour. And has crashed a few times in trying to just let it run. I do get some photos transferred, but there a few that seem to be troublesome. As well as the other folders on the drive just refusing to transfer at anything over than 0kb/sec.

 

I have tried other usb ports (3.0, 2.0) as well as another computer, and different cable.

 

Anyone have any ideas on what I could do? Could a data recovery software help? I try to look them up and it seems to be focused on deleted data, which is not my issue. And if I look up dropped hard drive it focuses on drives that won't even boot up.

 

Any help is greatly appreciated guys!

[Spotty]

41 minutes ago, Coincidal said:

Some folders take 10-15 minutes to load even if there is only a few files in there. Some just cause windows explorer to stop responding and crash. When in the root of the drive and attempting to xfer a 1gb folder of pictures, it starts to transfer at around 350kb/sec then drops to 0, then maybe to 10kb/sec back to 350kb/sec then 0 kb/sec.

Sounds like you've got a bad drive. Probably bad sectors that it can't read and it's getting stuck, or some other issue.

You can try running software such as CrystalDiskInfo to see if it is displaying any SMART errors.

 

42 minutes ago, Coincidal said:

Anyone have any ideas on what I could do? Could a data recovery software help? I try to look them up and it seems to be focused on deleted data, which is not my issue. And if I look up dropped hard drive it focuses on drives that won't even boot up.

Data recovery software probably won't really help if the drive itself is dead. There are data recovery services which may be able to recover some or all of the data however they can be expensive.

[Coincidal]

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

Sounds like you've got a bad drive. Probably bad sectors that it can't read and it's getting stuck, or some other issue.

You can try running software such as CrystalDiskInfo to see if it is displaying any SMART errors.

 

Data recovery software probably won't really help if the drive itself is dead. There are data recovery services which may be able to recover some or all of the data however they can be expensive.

Ah so basically so there's no way to repair the bad sectors (if there is any) or anything like that? I've heard of hdd repair tools would any of those be any use here? Or am I pretty much just going to have to choose to get a data recovery service to get the data for me or lose my data?

[Kilrah]

Bad sectors/heads.

 

You can use something like ddrescue on linux that does its best to skip them instead of hanging on them for ages.

But if you want best chances you should probably stop and contact a data recovery company before more damage is done.

[Coincidal]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Bad sectors/heads.

 

You can use something like ddrescue on linux that does its best to skip them instead of hanging on them for ages.

But if you want best chances you should probably stop and contact a data recovery company before more damage is done.

Gotchya, I was looking at ddrescue for a bit until I realized it was linux and mac only. And it's been so long since ive tried to boot into linux on anything other than raspberry pi, might be worth a shot though. Thanks!