What Method To Test A New Usb External Hard Drive After Scare New One Failed ?

Hi,

WHAT METHOD WITH WINDOWS RUNNING TO TEST THOROUGHLY THE HEALTH OF A NEW USB HDD WESTERN DIGITAL ?

As a new one has failed me in 2 weeks along with backup of 4Tb data. A friend has had a WD 8Tb do the same after 3 days, after having had same happen prior then, so again lost the backup.

I had PC acting up, explorer folders all went beige colour when selecting a folder to save to, unable to save, message appeared I/O device error.
so my D drive 2tb data (which is on one half of my 4Tb WD internal HDD, the other half being E drive, ( all my purchased progs and some videos) is apparently failing after 4 years use.
spend 2 days little sleep copy paste to a new WD usb HDD I had been using the last 2 weeks, backing up D and E at horrendous slow speeds 200kb/sec through to 2Mb/sec, focusing on most important folders first. Imagine 4Tb at that pace.
Then wonder why if I chose internal drive it was quick, and why this new usb had properties flickers and takes ages to tell me data, and is SLOW to write to, I was using properties to try and verify if files copied had all arrived etc, took 20 mins to tell me I had copied 58Gb, thats terrible, ..so reboot PC and a black screen, doesnt boot, remove all usb HDD and whizzo back to normal, plug usb HDD back in dink donk but not viewable. try a few times, it locks up Pc.
Its a dead 'un 2 days wasted.
At least PC is healthy, ...OH NO IT ISNT...
without any usb plugged in, I now have I/O again (so the Msoft message says) on D and on E which share that 4Tb drive, beige panel over all folders when select one to save to, so my internal maybe is failing. I must back up the files etc...again.
buy a WD 2Tb and a 4TB drive, need to test these this time as I cannot afford to lose D and E data to two dodgy usb's

How do I test these new WD drives WITH WINDOWS RUNNING. ?

I AM WINDOWS 7 64 BIT PRO (and planning to go to win10)

and I dare not shut PC down as it may never boot up or see D and E again, so anything that requires dos window or a boot disc etc is out !

Should I also format them , and what sort of format, as I never do so, get told no need etc.

I once bought a Seagate usb_HDD but its not same as WD, Acronis would not recognise it for the backup of C drive, yet argos has loads of seagate now and hardly any WD, I had to come away with a 2Tb WD then drive to another and all they had was 4Tb WD.

why do Seagate have to be different and deny us of normal use. I am told to format the drive to a different format, and that it is not straightforward, that I fear could cause further problems, messing about before I even start, altering to a non designed format.

As time is of the essence as D and E could be lost to me, one gets no warning much, messing about long formatting might be the time I need to save my data.

DBenz

 

Do WD have any drive testing software? If yes then I’d try those first.
I’d also recommend Crystaldisk: https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskmark/
For constant scanning for drive problems I use HD Sentinel Pro, there’s also a Home version: https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_trial.php

 

I had an I/O read error on my external hard drive (Macrium images) which only appeared when the laptop was woken after sleep (overnight) & to fix it I created a new full image & then deleted all older images. There was also a folder on the drive which I deleted.
It was a weird problem.