Hi
I have a newish 10 Tb WD Elements external desktop HD. It has been in use less than 2 weeks and isn't always on. I have filled about 3 Tb of it.
I had it on for a few hours yesterday and was surprised that the light was still blinking and there were occasional sounds from it when not in use ie. I wasn't accessing files on it.
I had copied a small file ie. 300Mb or so to it about 30 mins earlier and was surprised by the slow speed (5 mins) compared to what I had previously experienced from the USB 3.0 connection to the Thunderbolt port via an adapter.
I tried using Disk Utility to perfom a First Aid check but it said it wouldn't unmount to do the check and cautioned me to backup the data.
I could unmount it from Finder and when I rebooted the Mac, it was fine when I did a First Aid check subsequently using Disk Utility.
Subsequently on another occasion when I tried to transfer about 8 Gb of data to it, it became very slow again with an estimated time to completion of over 30 mins.
Is there a likelihood that the drive isn't faulty but Spotlight or something else was accessing the drive to do indexing since it was new? Could this be the cause of the single instance of slow speed and the failure to unmount and perform a First Aid test on Disk Utility initially?
Does anyone have any experience with WD Elements drives and know if it is normal for the front panel light to blink with occasional noises when not being accessed? I have WD My Book's and they do not show these traits nearly as much if at all.
Is there a free hard disk utility to check for bad sectors on an external drive? I have WD Disk Utility but it works only for My Book's and NOT the Elements hard drives (which do not show up on it).
Thanks
I have a newish 10 Tb WD Elements external desktop HD. It has been in use less than 2 weeks and isn't always on. I have filled about 3 Tb of it.
I had it on for a few hours yesterday and was surprised that the light was still blinking and there were occasional sounds from it when not in use ie. I wasn't accessing files on it.
I had copied a small file ie. 300Mb or so to it about 30 mins earlier and was surprised by the slow speed (5 mins) compared to what I had previously experienced from the USB 3.0 connection to the Thunderbolt port via an adapter.
I tried using Disk Utility to perfom a First Aid check but it said it wouldn't unmount to do the check and cautioned me to backup the data.
I could unmount it from Finder and when I rebooted the Mac, it was fine when I did a First Aid check subsequently using Disk Utility.
Subsequently on another occasion when I tried to transfer about 8 Gb of data to it, it became very slow again with an estimated time to completion of over 30 mins.
Is there a likelihood that the drive isn't faulty but Spotlight or something else was accessing the drive to do indexing since it was new? Could this be the cause of the single instance of slow speed and the failure to unmount and perform a First Aid test on Disk Utility initially?
Does anyone have any experience with WD Elements drives and know if it is normal for the front panel light to blink with occasional noises when not being accessed? I have WD My Book's and they do not show these traits nearly as much if at all.
Is there a free hard disk utility to check for bad sectors on an external drive? I have WD Disk Utility but it works only for My Book's and NOT the Elements hard drives (which do not show up on it).
Thanks