External Hard Drive solutions?

[siberiansteel11]

So I have this old WD external hard drive ( the ones that you still need a power adapter) and one time this external couldn't be detected, so I didn't use it for months ( because I was assuming it was dead) just today out of curiosity it got detected by my pc again BUT there were malfunctions like whenever you transfer files(with usb 3.0) it was slow around 10mb/s and I'm pretty sure this HD supports usb 3.0 so I managed to back up some old files and then went to the process of reformat. so now I had this clean 1tb external drive and the problem still persists ( transfer speed) so what I did was I opened the external and got this 1tb caviar green drive. so what I did was try to connect it directly to the computer using sata but the computer for some reason didn't detect it as well. so I took the PCB that came with the external enclosure and just went back to usb connection so the computer detected it again (yey!) so I scanned for bad sectors and it basically clean no bad sectors. so anyhow what could cause this problem ?   

[MoonSpot]

Sounds like the WD "worldbook" I had before i took a hammer to it, cannibalized the HDDs and tossed the encloser in the trash.

For me the issue was that the software controlling everything (from factory).  It wasn't an issue when i first bought/used it, but became one when trying to use it again after having been sitting off to the side unused..  The OS/interfacing software was some convoluted third party garbage that wanted me to pay/jump through hoops in order to utilized it again. 

So I basically said, "Fack this!  Hulk Smash!",  took the drives and moved on to my NAS.

[LogicalDrm]

As for transfer speeds. Its 5400rpm drive. It isn't very fast even in SATA. And you say its old? It might be older than USB3. Consumer USB3 haven't been here very long. So if the drive side plug is blue, then you have USB3. Otherwise its USB2. Can you see the drive on BIOS when its connected by SATA? You might need to reformat it in OS just in case there's something wrong with that.

[siberiansteel11]

As for transfer speeds. Its 5400rpm drive. It isn't very fast even in SATA. And you say its old? It might be older than USB3. Consumer USB3 haven't been here very long. So if the drive side plug is blue, then you have USB3. Otherwise its USB2. Can you see the drive on BIOS when its connected by SATA? You might need to reformat it in OS just in case there's something wrong with that.

 says usb 3.0 though But Crystal Disk info gave it a Bad Status so I'm throwing it but Thanks and no for some reason I can't see the drive in bios when I'm using sata so i guess this is broken 

[Mighty_Miro_WD]

HI siberiansteel11,

It's an unpleasant situation you've experienced. In such cases you may try with another USB 3.0 cable or to attach the device on a different computer. Another thing that could help is to update or to reinstall your USB drivers - this could increase your transfer rate as well.

The difficulties with such issues are that the transfer speed of the hard drive depends on many variables - it's not just RPM of the drive, but the platter sizes, cache buffer, interface (SATA I, II, III, etc.) and also the interface chipset (brand/model of the SATA chip on the motherboard you're connecting to).

Hope this helps