External Hard Drive issues...

[twangling_jack]

Okay, well, first, I must say that I'm not sure if this issue has to do with Windows Vista (I'm running Home Basic) or if it has to do with my external hard drive itself.

About a year ago, I purchased this external hard drive:

http://www.iomagic.com/Products/show_all_r...ProdID=I250HD35

I have been pleased with it. The data transfer was really fast. I managed to fill up almost all 250GB. So for the most part, it has been faithful and reliable. However, recently I ended up having to format my computer and do a clean install of Vista Home Basic. Since that happened, my external hard drive has been really slow. I used to be able to transfer 8 Mb/s easily. Now I'm only getting around 800 KB/sec. It takes hours to transfer stuff, when before it only took minutes.

Now my question is: what could be wrong here? My computer has USB 2.0 (I mean, which computers don't nowadays?). Is there a driver I am missing? Is it a bad USB cable? Is my hard drive going kaput? It is very frustrating having to transfer some of my data overnight.

I'm not sure if I've provided enough info, but I will gladly post more if needed.

Thanks!

[AlanHo]

Try This

[twangling_jack]

Try This

I should have mentioned that earlier, but I have tried that already. I'm just not getting anywhere near the speeds I was before. I'm using the same USB port that I did when it would go full speed. Is there some type of driver or service that may have been lost in the re-install of Vista? Or could this be due to a faulty USB cable?

[catgate]

I managed to fill up almost all 250GB.

Is this significant? Is it having trouble finding space?

[Boris]

I managed to fill up almost all 250GB.

Is this significant? Is it having trouble finding space?

Tips for Increasing Performance - External Drives

Defragment the drive.

The drive's partition can can become fragmented in the course of normal usage. Running the defrag utility in Windows can often improve the performance of a slow drive by consolidating scattered files and data, making it easier to access more quickly.

Run CheckDisk on the drive.

Replace your USB cable - a damaged cable can decrease performance.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000dd04090aRCRD

[-pops-]

As it appears that you have a full Vista disk, I assume that you have a motherboard drivers disk as well.

If that is so, a possibility is that legacy USB driers in the BIOS were disturbed/deleted during the re-install. Try reloading from the motherboard or computer disk (not the Windows disk).

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

We see the same thing again, and again - people reinstalling Windows, instead of restoring a backup of when the system was good.

After reinstalling, things can be different - missing applications, not-working devices, and what-not.

There is almost never any reason to reinstall Windows XP or Vista. A restore will almost always be better.

Anyway, apart from defragmenting your external disk, try to find a better driver using http://www.drivermax.com/

[twangling_jack]

We see the same thing again, and again - people reinstalling Windows, instead of restoring a backup of when the system was good.

After reinstalling, things can be different - missing applications, not-working devices, and what-not.

There is almost never any reason to reinstall Windows XP or Vista. A restore will almost always be better.

Anyway, apart from defragmenting your external disk, try to find a better driver using http://www.drivermax.com/

Well, you see, I had no choice. My computer wouldn't even make it to the log on screen when I restarted it one day. It would make it past the Microsoft logo, then it would have a black screen and show my mouse pointer, but then restart. It didn't even show the Vista logo or anything. It would do it every time, and so I tried doing the Vista recovery stuff, but for some reason it erased my system restore points (it said I had none). I tried every option, and none of them worked, leaving me no choice but to format and do a clean install.

I am actually going to try defragmenting and seeing what that does. However, I'm not sure if its due to a faulty USB cable, but it is going to take at least a day to defragment, according to TuneUp Utilities. I know this isn't in the slightest normal. But it seems to be going. I will also try and find a better driver with the link you provided. I will order up a new USB cable when I get a chance, even if it is not the problem. Never hurts to have a back-up.

Thanks for the info and help guys!

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Your last sentence "Never hurts to have a back-up" is very wise; you should take it to heart.

What I meant when I suggested restore from a backup, was not System Restore, but restore from a manually taken backup, with a backup software such as Acronis.

If you have such a backup, and your system fails, you can boot with the Acronis emergency disk, then completely restore your system to when it was working perfectly.

Losing time and data by reinstalling Windows is not something I would ever consider.

[twangling_jack]

Well, defragmenting and using driver max didn't help. The last thing I'm going to try is the USB cable. However, I'm not sure what a good, reliable cable would be. Would anybody mind helping me out with this? I'm just trying to find a USB cable that is a-male to a-male, has the best transfer rate, is fairly cheap and reliable for the most part.