External HDD can't copy large files

A few years ago I bought my daughter a Western Digital HDD, 500gb capacity. It's about 3/4 full now with her movies. The last few days I DL'd a bunch more, mostly 'toons and animations. For ease, I DL'd them onto my laptop's drive and then tried to copy them to her HDD. If the file is below 1gb, it seems to copy OK. But if it is larger, it gets about halfway and then freezes, and won't respond. When I hit cancel, it seems to stop copying and won't respond,  but the system freezes, I lose my desktop, and have to do a restart.

  This morning I tried to defrag the HDD, thinking that might help, but it will not let itself be defrag'd. I thought perhaps from the times I'd had to cancel a file-copy or file-move because of this 'freezing' problem, that it may have left some 'junk' behind which was blocking up some memory.

Any ideas about how I can get it to copy properly, or get it to show in the defrag window ? After I unplugged it (during one of the restarts) and then plugged it back in, I got a window asking if I wanted to scan it. I checked yes, and then it said it could not be scanned.  I'm running Windows 7, on a Dell Vostro.

Thanks!

Edited by PGHinBKK, 21 December 2016 - 12:26 AM.

Id remove the drive my self and put it right in to a desktop and see what happens.

might be a good time as well to backup everything in case the drive is dieing.

A lot of WD drives, especially the portables cannot be removed as the USB bridge card with the the micro USB port is integrated with the drive's PCB. The MY BOOKS have a special bridge card that encrypts the data. 

I would recommend you backup any data on this drive if it is important and cannot be replaced. I would then run a diagnostic on the drive with Seatools for Windows.

Here are some links.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrDKD8Y2cZY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpwt13uDDZo

https://community.wd.com/t/wd-my-book-duo-data-forever-lost-if-drive-enclosure-dies/6496

https://community.wd.com/t/is-there-hardware-encryption-in-wd-my-book-external-hard-drives-for-pcs/143369/2

https://kbiva.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/repairing-wd-my-passport-essential-portable-hard-drive/

https://community.wd.com/t/has-anyone-successfully-recovered-data-from-a-wd-750gb-passport-drive-with-a-failed-micro-usb-pcb/7612/3

Here are some links. 

John C_21,

  Thanks for the links and tips. There's nothing crucial on the drive, just movies that have taken me a lot of time to collect...everything from classics like Bugs Bunny to the newer animations. There's about 300 single movies plus folders with multiple movies and I don;t have the space to back it all up. I'll definitely be running the diagnostics probably tomorrow (it's 1:!5am here) and I'll let you know.

Thanks again.

If the drive checks out okay then do a chkdsk /r on the drive but a word of warning. Sometimes chkdsk can make things worse if the file system is corrupted. I wonder if you would get the copy problem with your security software disabled. 

It would be interesting to see if you had the same problem copying the files using a live linux disk. 

You cannot defrag a disk if there is not enough free space on it. Some 3rd party defraggers can do it though.

A one TB drive is cheap, if you don't have the space time to get more i would think and back things up.

JohnC_21,

  In the 'Computer' window, it shows the drive having 123gb of free space out of a total of 465gb (you never get the advertised amount!!   (...sigh...).  But this isn't enough to do a defrag? 

  I checked the Seatools links, and there was no mention of working on a WD HDD, only Seagates. The youtube vids were for disassembly of non-functional drives. This one works, I can open it and retrieve movies, and I can save small files, it's just the large ones that are problematic. That's why i suspected something memory-related. I'm going to search youtube for how to defrag an external WD HDD and let you know what I find.  Thanks again. 

BTW, this HDD is not partitioned....it is essentially one large 465gb drive. It has an 'Autorun' folder, and a 'WD Smartware Pro Free Trial' folder, with not much in them, and no diagnostic info.

Been checking, cannot find a SINGLE vid about defragging an external HDD. LOTS of repair and replacement vids but nothing on defragging an external HDD. Not that I'm sure it needs this but I can't think of what else to do...

I just dumped a folder of 'The Jetsons' and a few movies, brought the usable space up to 171gb.

Edited by PGHinBKK, 22 December 2016 - 01:03 AM.

My self i like this topic when it come down to problem hdds.

https://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

JohnC_21,

  I found a WD support site,   http://support.wdc.com/ 

This led me to one of their dx programs 'Data Lifeguard Diagnostics' at https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=940&h=1&lang=en

I downloaded the small program, ran it as an admin, and got mixed results....

Interesting....it passed a short 'SmartPass' scan, but when I ran an extended test, it came up as "Too many bad sectors detected"...I'll have to play with it tomorrow and see what is up. I copied a movie onto it before the test, 700MB, and it copied perfectly. The ribbon gauge took about 10 seconds to traverse the width of the run, and then hesitated about 5 seconds about 1/4" from the end, then finished and no problem.  I don't quite get it.

Interestingly, the little readout window of the program that says it passed the 'SmartStatus' test also said the drive has 203gb of free space, not 171gb like the Windows 'Computer' window says.... I'm wondering if the mystery 30gb is where the problem lies...

Edited by PGHinBKK, 25 December 2016 - 06:58 AM.

That is definitely enough to defrag. The drive is failing. You need to recover what files you can and get a new drive.

Edited by JohnC_21, 25 December 2016 - 09:27 AM.

JohnC_21, when I ran the WD diagnostics, 'DeepScan' the first time it took several hours and said it found 'too many bad sectors'. But when I did a 'QuickScan', it pronounced the drive as 'Healthy. It's still working, so I'll keep using it but maybe at the end of next month get another one (NOT a Seagate) and copy all the files to it. I heard that Toshiba and Hitachi make HDDs that are more reliable than Seagate (which are made or at least assembled here in Thailand) so I'll probably go with one of them. Have  you heard anything about the various brands of HDDs as to which ones are more reliable? I know you can't give an 'official' endorsement but just thought I'd ask...

Edited by PGHinBKK, 29 December 2016 - 07:33 PM.

Have you tried running the long test using a different cable. Warning: this will put more stress on the drive so do not do it until all data is backed up. 

All drives are junk compared to how they were built 10 years ago. There are no only three drive manufacturers. Hitachi was rolled into WD but required to maintain it as a separate division as part of the merger.

From what I read WD reds are good as well as the Hitachis. I have a Toshiba which I like.

Just as a note: Most of the portables have the USB bridge card integrated into the drive's PCB. The USB connector is soldered to the the PCB so it is impossible to remove these drivers and put them in an enclosure should the USB connector break. I never had an issue but buying a separate bare drive and separate enclosure is an option. 

Even the WD My Books have a proprietary USB bridge card where you cannot remove the drive and place it in an enclosure as it is encrypted by the proprietary card. Download Gsmartcontrol and run the short/long test. Look under the attributes tab for any pink or red rows. Post the log. Warning: this will put more stress on the drive so do not do it until all data is backed up.