Extremely slow hard drive 100% usage. Please help.

[Pudgemiester]

Hello, my hard drive started slowing down a lot (while trying to open games and such) and it even takes a bit to open up files in it. Whenever i have something open such as file explorer to just skim the files its usage is at 100% for some reason. I wanted to know if someone knew what might be causing it to slow AND if i can image/clone it? because i tried  dragging and dropping files but it takes way too long. It was copying less than 1mb a sec. and i need to copy 1.3tbs over to the new 4tb hard drive i just bought.

[patio]

Size of the HDD ? ?
How much used space ? ?

[BC_Programmer]

Disk Utilization/Active time is effectively based on how much time of an I/O request is spent waiting for the drive. This usually maps directly to how frequently the disk is being accessed and how quickly.

The red flag, however, is in your image- the active time is at 98%, but the read speed is only 1.3MB/s. What that means is that after asking for Data the system is sitting and twiddling it's thumbs waiting for the drive to retrieve it, and the reason it takes longer is likely due to disk failure, as a result of the drive having to re-read sectors and/or re-read data in order to service the I/O requests, during which time it is considered "active" by the OS.

What this means overall is that the drive is failing, if not already failed. As far as Copying data- You might be able to use a partition clone tool such as Macrium Reflect to clone the partition to the 4TB. But I wouldn't expect too much.

[Pudgemiester]

Appreciate the help and clarification. I was going to clone it with that same software but i dont know how long it will take. Manually dragging over pictures and small documents in groups of 3 or 4 has been working and is fast. but when i try to do a bigger file it takes forever. Even just trying to delete something from it and then delete it from my recycle bin takes forever. Is there any way to get more speed out of it so i can do the cloning or dragging? Or should i just go ahead and try the clone. Im fine with reinstalling things i just want to keep data, like save games and mods.
Also the size of the previous hdd was 2tb with only about have of it being used.

[Pudgemiester]

Also to clarify i have my os and other important things related to windows on my c drive SSD. Ive used resource monitor and anything related to my d drive has long response times.

[Lisa_maree]

The Seagate  ST2000MD01 drive you are copying from had a high incident rate for weak head or heads. You need to only run the drive when you have a good plan of the steps to take to transfer your data  as the longer you try, the nearer you come to the drive not working and needing special equipment to recover. If you load a trial of HDSentinel this will diagnose the 2 TB and confirm the weak head, it's available from here

https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_trial.php

Linux is a better option for working with a drive with slow access and i would suggest a live boot of clonezilla  check it out with the 2 TB disconnected, say copy your SSD to the 4 TB to get a feel for the software.

https://clonezilla.org/


   

[Pudgemiester]

Does the disk sentinel just help me see the health of my drives? or can it help with the data transfer? Also is there a better way to data transfer? lkike a service or something? i would honestly pay for this. Right now ive been looking through it and grabbing important files for my games. its taking a really LONG time

[patio]

Tried a brand new data cable yet ? ?

[Pudgemiester]

I have not tried a new cable but disk sentinel is telling me its at 5% health and has weak/bad sectors.

[BC_Programmer]

Also is there a better way to data transfer? lkike a service or something?

At this point you'd be looking at a Data Recovery service to recover the data. Those can cost upwards of a thousand dollars or more.

[Lisa_maree]

Did you capture a screen shot of the HDsentinal screen ? If you did then could you post it so we can check some things. I want to see if the weak sectors/bad sectors are just a few or 1000's. If it is in the 1000's you need special software and hardware to work with the drive as BC_Programmer said you will need a specialist data recovery company.

HD sentinel is a hard drive diagnostic/information tool, it doesn't do drive copying.

For windows drive copying, making an exact copy to a file or larger Hard drive which you can then recover from. one option is https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/

Windows is very hard on drives when copying bad sectors trying 100's of times to read a bad sector. Specialist tools and Linux can ignore bad sectors, copy the good sectors quickly and then go back and attempt to recover as much information as possible from the bad sectors focusing only on the sectors with data. The software can then report on the success and what files may need reloading.

The first thing though with any hard drive fault is to diagnose what is wrong and know what steps to take to get the desired result.

I'm sharing this as it only applies to mechanical drives.

SSD's require a different method,  if users monitored either with the tools supplied by the SSD manufacture or programs like HDsentinel then Data recovery would not be necessary.   
 



 

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Hello, my hard drive started slowing down a lot (while trying to open games and such) and it even takes a bit to open up files in it. Whenever i have something open such as file explorer to just skim the files its usage is at 100% for some reason. I wanted to know if someone knew what might be causing it to slow AND if i can image/clone it? because i tried  dragging and dropping files but it takes way too long. It was copying less than 1mb a sec. and i need to copy 1.3tbs over to the new 4tb hard drive i just bought.

This is a really bad drive. If it's making a very quite clicking sound .. It's done. If not .. you can try replacing the PCB .. that would be a lot cheaper than forensic recovery and you will learn something and have fun. It's really not hard to replace.

I use data recovery software that also creates a disk image as well as recovering data .. but you probably will need to carve the drive to get it back ... even if the PCB replacement worked. Carving to drive kills it by the way .. but you likely will get all your data back. This software is very expensive but there are cheaper recovery software options .. around $100 or so. Operating as it is .. this would take ages ..