Urgent: External HDD Problem

[Xaneden]

Hey Guys,
Over the past few hours, I've noticed several problems with my external HDD. Its a Maxtor OneTouch II 300GB, and is 80% full. When I try to enter it in explorer, it is very slow and erratic in action. It take about 30 seconds to open the first folder I come across, and sometimes just ends with a 'not responding' series of errors. I've done a disk checking scan which finds nothing, and I've tried to Analyse the HDD in Disk Defragmentor. It took about 10 minutes, and gave me this:



Although it isn't fantastic, its hardly bad enough to give such laggy results. I'm worried that the program will become unresponsive during defragmentation due to this laggy speed. Finally, when I try to play a song, it takes about 20 seconds to load. The timer is unresponsive and after a few seconds jumps to 6/3:20 etc. Another 10 seconds later, the song starts to play, either slugishly, or sometimes with no problem, but the media player itself is unresponsive. I don't get this when I open a music file from my laptop's HDD or any USB flash stick etc.

As I have 200+ gb of files on this HDD, I am obviously alarmed and worried about this. I could really do with some advice on what to do here; I am concerned that the drive could pack up or that I am seeing the early signs of corruption.

Thanks for any help you guys can give,
Xaneden.

[da_ging]

backup any important stuff from it and run maxtors testing software on the drive and see what that comes up with, if it says the drive is fine then do a low level format fill it back up with data and see if its any better

[Xaneden]

I would do the reformat option Da Ging, but I have no means to backup that much data. Still, I'll try your Maxtor Tool suggestion. Thanks a lot.

[Xaneden]

Unfortunately, I just had a look on the Maxtor site and can see no such testing software for the OneTouchII drives. Could anyone supply a link or tell me a place I can get hold of it please?

[peterb]

Have you tried the drive on another computer - it could be something running in the background (malware?) that is loading the processor and making USB devices unresponsive. (assuming it is a USB device)

[da_ging]

western digitals Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows tests usb drives, but i'd have said the drive is prob fine it just needs a format as ive noticed that external drives cock up all to often but a quick format fixes them