Hi, I have a 2TB my passport ultra HDD (2016) and until a couple of days ago I was very happy with it. I’ve posted this as a support question but didn’t get an answer, so I’m asking you here for any ideas.
a) A couple of days ago, for no apparent reason, the unlocking-“CD/DVD”-drive was not always available in Windows 10 when plugging in the USB. However, the windows cursor intermittendly kept showing a DVD-icon next to the arrow, like when it is reading a new drive.
b) When the unlocking drive was available, it only occasionally opened the unlocking software. When it did, it only occasionally actually unlocked the drive.
c) And when it did unlock the drive itself, the drive was tracking 100% active time while being incredibly slow - it is possible to get to the files when the actual drive is unlocked, but copying a 500KB pdf took about 5 Minutes - with most of the time doing nothing (0 data transfer while 100% active in task manager) and the occasional blip of data transfer.
I’ve been trying to selectively copy a few files for which there may be no backup. This is what I’ve observed - the drive’s “active time” is somehow inversely proportional to the data throughput, ie, whenever the active time drops from 100% data will be copied. It just takes “forever” for that moment to occur. At that point, the drive will copy a couple of files (although at speeds not exceeding 1MB/s) and then stop again while going back up to “active time” 100%.
I have no idea what’s going on. The Smart Status of the drive is ok in WD Drive Utiilties, but no other test will run through WD Drive Utilities.
Does this indicate a controller issue? Is there something I can do here?
Interesingly, the drive seems to currently work more reliably when connected not to the machine’s USB 3.0 connector but to an external (powered) USB-3 Hub.
Also, whenever the drive is mounted and an action is attempted (like opening a directory), Windows Explorer becomes occasionally unreactive for a longer period of time. It doesn’t crash, it just takes very long to perform the requested action. Interestingly, this also seems to affect other system operations, like taking a screenshot with “WIN+Shift+S” which will not copy the screenshot to the clipboard while explorer is unreactive when attempting to perform an action on the mounted my passport drive. Maybe the filesystem in general becomes blocked in some way by the hard drive controller?
Thanks for any idea!
