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Harddisk Failure or Windows Glitch?

Tags: Hardware, Windows

Last week, the green progress bar in windows explorer suddenly became very slow to load fully. Sometimes it did load fully eventually, but more often it just freezed at about 90% progress mark. Immediately I thought this could be sign of a failing harddisk, but it happened to any folder on any of the six harddrives, so I thought it could be something else. After some googling, I tried the various suggestions to fix it but none work. I was hesitate to restart the computer, worrying that it will not restart again.

So I bought a new harddrive and be prepared for the worst situation, then shut down my computer. Two of the hard drives are external, which I powered off after shutting down. Miraculously, after the computer is restarted, the issue was gone. But as soon as I reconnected the external harddisks (one or both), the issue came back. So the problem seemed to be with the two external harddisks, which are both more than 10 years old.

What I did next was to scan all my harddisks for health status, including the two external harddisks. First I used CrystalDiskInfo on all of them, then I used WD Drive Utilities on the external ones, and Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for the internal ones. Surprisingly, all returned with positive results with no issue found.

Once I’ve run the diagnose tests on all the harddisks, I restarted the computer again. To my greater surprise, now the issue is totally gone, even with the two external harddisks connected and powered on.

So now the question is, are the two harddisks actually dying, or it was just a random Windows issue? Given the old age of the two external harddisks, is it safe to continue using them? Are there any other in-depth diagnotics can be done for more details analysis rather than just “Healthy”, “Passed” or “Good”?

Thanks.

Topic

There are reasons the issue vanishes after scans and tests.

In reply to Harddisk Failure or Windows Glitch?

The HDDs have code to block out bad areas that only kick in on use.

For now we know that when HDDs glitch like that it’s best to verify our backups and get ready for replacements.

How to backup? Google this: 321 BACKUP

Reply To: Harddisk Failure or Windows Glitch?

In reply to There are reasons the issue vanishes after scans and tests.

The two external HDDs are actually backup drives. The main data are on the newer internal drives.

I remember in the past, like 10-20 years ago, HDD diagnostic would yield a report showing how many bad sectors were there on the drive, then we could tell whether the HDD is slightly bad or very bad.

If drives are attached they fail to meet the requirements for backups.

In reply to Reply To: Harddisk Failure or Windows Glitch?

Google 321 BACKUP if you are serious about backups.

Might be time for new drives

In reply to Harddisk Failure or Windows Glitch?

Could be a glitch; could be the drives are slowly on their way out… I wouldn’t risk it personally; double check your file integrity and offload it to new devices at the bare minimum.

A couple of other things to think about

In reply to Harddisk Failure or Windows Glitch?

The most obvious is thing as this is happening on external drives check that the USB Drivers are intact in Device Manager and update if necessary. Also because this is only happening with external drives connected and running check the temp of those drives as if they are left running all of the time they will get very hot and can cause errors to start happening.

The drive testing programs you have listed are all designed for specific Brands of HDD so Data Lifeguard is only for WD Drives so get the Testing utility for the brand of drive and type and test each drive with it’s own testing utility. Generally speaking leaving external HDD running 100% of the time is a bad idea as they overheat and if subject to any sort of vibration crash this even happens with ESATA Drives and I’ve picked up one so hot it gave me a fist degree burn good thing i was in a Doctors Surgery at the time.

Personally given the age of the drives and that they are in cases that get very hot when in use I would be looking at that as the main problem here so turn them off when you don’t need them or mount them in a Antec Cool Case which has a fan under the drive to cool them down somewhat and leave the bard metal cases alone never consider using them and drop any plastic cases like the plague as they lock the heat in much more than the cheaper metal case enclosures. The heat generated by the external drives could also be adversely affecting the Interface Circuitry between the Drive and the USB Lead.

Being so old in external cases I would also be looking at replacing the drives and as you say they are Backup Drives they most defiantly do not need to be running 100% of he time as any infection you may pickup will be transferred to the Backup Drives ad make them useless as Backup Drives as you do not want to transfer the infection directly to them as well as your system.

Reply To: Harddisk Failure or Windows Glitch?

In reply to A couple of other things to think about

More than one week since I ran the diagnotics, which seemed to have eliminated the issue, it never happened again until today. Over the past few days, I had occasionally powered on the two external drives and randomly accessing files on them, and they seemed to behave normally.

I have a look in the Device Manager and the USB drivers seemed to be intact. I tried updating them anyway and no issue found.

All my drives are WD, that’s why I used the WD Drive Utilities and Data Lifeguard Diagnostic.

As for overheating concern, since they never shown any issue in the past 10 years or more, I never thought of monitoring their temperature. I shall try to run them for a few hours and check on their temperaturs.

Thanks.

Reply To: Harddisk Failure or Windows Glitch?

In reply to Harddisk Failure or Windows Glitch?

Sounds like it could be a Windows glitch, but the age of the external drives is a factor. Continue monitoring them, and consider backing up data regularly. A full SMART test could give more insights if you want to dive deeper.

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