Slow External hard drive

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Slow External hard drive

by scamiolo Jul 3, 2014 10:53PM PDT

Dear all
I am connecting to a remote server to work. I attached a 3TB external hard drive to this server and to all my work on it since I elaborate very large files. This hard drive has been working for almost 2 years know without stopping. Several times reached the 90% of the storage and was reported to 50% by deleting useless data. In the last days I find it very slow. As an example when I try to use simple linux commands such as ls, grep or wc to interrogate the files info it can takes even ten minutes. Such a behaviour was not followed previously and if I try the same operations in the internal server hard drive I do not experience the same problems.
Do you think these may be symptoms of a hard drive that is on is way to get broken? At the moment I am moving all my precious data to a NAS and planning to reformat the external hard drive. Do you have any suggestions?
thanks for your help

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thanks

by scamiolo Jul 4, 2014 12:51AM PDT

What about formatting? Do you think that formatting may lead to the original disk health and allow me to re-copy the data back from the backup?

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I would remove the partition first.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jul 4, 2014 12:56AM PDT

As file system errors are common after years of use, formatting could miss an issue I've bumped into over the years. That is, I've only seen that other issue corrected by removing all the partitions on the drive, and starting fresh. Formatting never corrected that one.

However if the drive was on a server, it's possible to wear it out under some conditions. But try a fresh start. Again, I can't write at length why a format didn't correct the drives I found with that issue but it did create a lot of trouble for many.
Bob

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Is Gparted ok?

by scamiolo Jul 4, 2014 1:21AM PDT

When you say "starting fresh" what do you mean exactly? I can use a software such as Gparted, remove the partition, create e new one and formatting it with the ext3 filesystem that I use. What do you think about this solution?
thanks for your advices!

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Sounds fine.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jul 4, 2014 1:26AM PDT

For the most part, how to accomplish the procedure rarely matters. That is some get hung up on which app versus what needs to get done.

Remember I don't think this will correct a cranky drive but it will remove a rare issue I've bumped into over the years.
Bob

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Thanks

by scamiolo Jul 4, 2014 1:39AM PDT

I'll try gparted then. Thanks for helping

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r. proffitt · Accepted Answer · Jul 4, 2014 12:33AM PDT

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Did you try a new drive?

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jul 4, 2014 12:33AM PDT

These don't last forever and I find the fastest fix is often to swap in a new drive to copy in the content from backups.
Bob

Slow External hard drive

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