hard drive acting strange while copying

hi-
i tried to search for help but i cannot find an exact topic..

i bought a 2TB mybook, conneced through firewire 400.

i moved 100GB from this internal:
488GB Western Digital WDC WD5000AAKS-22TMA0 ATA Device (SATA)
to the mybook.
it moved the files quickly (30MB/sc.).

but from now on, when i try to copy files back to the WD500, it get's slow and almost stuck at a ridiculously slow speed.. (3 hours for 20GB ???)
it never done this before.
tried to restart, but it acts the same with no change.
cpu is free.
apart from that, the WD500 acts fine, i can play heavy video files etc..

what happened? (i listed my specs in profile)

* it seems to have this problem ONLY when copying files from the Mybook.
tried to copy from another internal and it copies fine (60MB/sc.)

how come i can transfer files FROM the WD500 to the Mybook, but not vice versa ?

thanks in advance.

I had very similar issues with the MyBook that I purchased except it was with the esata connection. Sometimes I couldn't get the drive to recognize unless I rebooted with the drive plugged in. There were posts out there saying it was because of the esata cable and you should "trim" the cable shroud with a razor knife so that the connection made it all the way into the MyBook. Really WD? Sometimes the drive would even go into a sleep state right in the middle of a transfer causing delayed write failures. Transfer speed was NEVER consistent for me and often seemed way too slow to be "normal". WD support was no help. They tried selling me different esata cables and cards which was unacceptable to me. I knew my hardware worked just fine.

In the end I bought a $30 esata dock from NewEgg and carefully ripped my hard drive out of the MyBook. Put the drive in the newly purchased dock, it's been rock solid ever since, same esata controller, same esata cable. For me, the moral of my story was, the MyBook really was horrible all around to work with. I know people that have had these and never had an issue, guess I was not one of those people.

oh no.. c'mon, i just bought it
and i thought Esata will even be faster!
why should there be any reading issues when copying? it acts perfectly normal when using it...


*the USB2 works fine... so why did i bother invest in a Esata compatible??
i thought it suppose to be a faster connection than USB2, better for editing HD, no?
it sure costs more money.
should i return it? will they accept it (reason: Esata connection faulty) ?

My issues were over the span of about 8 - 10 months roughly so it's a bit different than yours. If you just bought it and are able to return it, personally I would. But again my experience was not the same as others, it's kind of your call. Perhaps some others here could share and offer some advice on this as well. There are some incredibly smart people on these forums. You may want to not be hasty and see what some others have to say/offer before you decide to take an action in a particular direction.

Good luck

thanks for your reassuring words..

i just have to start editing this huge project and i'm a bit stressed.
and the Esata supposed to be faster than USB2, no?
so if it's plain rubbish so why did i waste the money?

rozroz, eSATA is definitely faster than USB2, no doubt about that, faster than FireWire as well. However, when it comes to specific devices, things may or may not be properly implemented.

For example, I have an old Seagate external hard drive. When I connect it to my laptop's built-in eSATA port, the speeds are well into 100 MB/s (as reported by Windows). Now, my desktop does not have a built-in eSATA port, instead I have a PCI-e add-on card. Here I have some problems with drive recognition and the speeds vary between 20 and 50. On the other hand, USB2 is hardly ever faster than 20.

Recently, I was looking for a new external hard drive for myself and I would not buy a drive without eSATA connection. However, given the appearance of USB3, eSATA drives are relatively rare. I am starting to think that an eSATA enclosure, for example such as TCG was talking about, is the way to go. After all, any external hard drive is just a regular hard drive already packaged into a nice enclosure (personally I never use the software that comes with those drives).

Finally, for your specific issue, I am not sure what's causing it. If you bought the drive recently, I would definitely exchange it. If, however, the problem persists, I would examine your system (drivers, etc.) as I doubt you'd be so unlucky as to get more than one defective drive in a row.

Edit:

What you're reporting as a slow speed comes up to roughly 1.9 MB/s. I've seen speeds like that with USB2. Try to check what your antivirus is doing during these transfers. Also, sometimes it's just Windows, maybe someone else will know more about what Windows is doing during the file copy process, but to be honest, I am rather unhappy with how copy is implemented in Windows 7.

thanks.
well i'm doing some tests:
it seems the firewire was the main problem. beware of firewire 400.
the usb2 is ok, but there were troubles disconnecting the HD. exporer has froze and had to shut down.
i'm trying the Esata with a fresh cable now. seems to work fine at the moment (100MB/sc.)

what the Esata connect regulations? do i only connect while computer is turned off?
or i can freely connect/disconnect all the time (as in USB)?