I don’t know if it’s just me, the way I use PCs or I’m just unlucky, but I’ve had another hard drive go tits up on me. It has been a gradual thing, the read/write seems to have become slower and slower … and slower. Accessing my digital photos with Bridge or Lightroom has been next to impossible. Despite the numerous updates from Microsoft and Adobe over the recent weeks I concluded it was a problem with the drive and not some spurious bug introduced by Auto Update.
I’ve now installed a new drive and am in the process of recovering the majority of my images from my backup drive – 1.5 TB I think. Unfortunately, some of my more recent work wasn’t backed up so I’ve jury-rigged the faulty drive into another, older machine in an attempt to copy the files onto it – Windows is telling me that it’s going to take 11.5 hours to copy one folder of 15GB – scratch that, I’ve just checked and it’s now going to take 16 hours. Whatever I can recover will save me having to redo my editing.
I don’t mind wasting my own time, but I hate have my time wasted.
—Stephen—
Stephen G Hipperson 
Bad luck, that’s a real bummer.
Have you checked the SMART stats to confirm it’s a fault? System becoming slow can mean many things…
I tried various testing methods – Seagate’s own test app wouldn’t run, though it would if I disconnected that drive. Also, it’s exhibiting the same problem in a different pc.
Hmm, that’s rather telling. See if you can try out a SMART reader though. On Windows there’s crystal disk info which is open source. Either way, get what you can out of the drive!
Good luck!
Thanks! I must admit in these cases it’s very much “Patience, dear boy, patience!”
Grrr indeed.
I can so relate! I’ve had computers crash and lost everything. It’s beyond the pits. Here’s to resolving the issue(s) and “moving right along” (Kermit).
Yes, the sooner it’s a mere blip in events the better!
Ooops!…
May I give you a tip? My PC is (touch wood!) 11 years old and still working nicely. The system I rigged is this:
2 at least 1 TB drives. One is always connected to the PC/Laptop, the other is for backups of the first 1TB drive.
On the connected drive you can create either several new drives like Docs, Photos or just maps – up to you. Drives is easier to work with.
Lets stick to the photos – you always save all photo’s on that new drive, from the moment you transfer them from the camera to the PC, instead of under Pictures or something that is provided by Windows (or MAC?). You can work on them on the hard drive of the PC but then again save them on the TB drive. That will leave heaps of breathing room to your computer and in case of a computer change, you just have to unplug the TB drive and plug it into the new machine… The second TB box is for regular backups of the first, as I said… just to be on the secure side.
Another point can be that your working memory is not up to the work… I have 4 GB RAM and that is really the limit. 8 GB would be better if your system supports it.
If it is a memory problem of the PC itself, all those Windows and other updates would make things even worse, by the way…
Just an idea… Up to you to try it… I could recommend some checks too – but have no idea how good you are at fiddling with computers… 😉
I hope this helps?…
Grts
Hi Nil, thanks for the tips!
My pc is only a few years old. But it is specified comprehensively. I run 2 internal drives, the ‘main’ drive (2TB) holds my operating system, and User areas (Windows 10). The secondary drive (the one that went faulty) is now 3TB and acts as my Image library and other large volume data. These are augmented by an external hard drive for backup (4TB). I have 24GB of RAM installed. 64-bit working. I haven’t gone for partitioned drives.
My faulty drive died completely while connected to my second machine – I just managed to copy some files (that I hadn’t backed up) across to that machines hard drive – I just need to network them across to where they should be now.
Thanks again.
Stephen
Wow! You got the pro version of what I did on my own and externally… Underestimated your system, it seems… Well, computers do have their ‘bad hair days’ and there is not much we can do about it when they have them, I guess… 😉
sad reminder
of hard disk
impermanence 🙂
My current pc was an upgrade because my old one wouldn’t support enough RAM – I suspect I’m now a little over the top, but hey!