Laptop takes 10 minutes to log in: black screen with cursor

[PlatypusKnight]

Looks like recovering the files off the drive might be a lost cause. Trying to copy using Windows explorer was incredibly slow. I read up a bit and found out that cloning the drive with ddrescue before using file recovery software on the new drive, is the best option.
At this rate it's going to take 26 weeks to finish cloning my 750GB drive....

Try mounting the drive and using TeraCopy and FastCopy in that order.

FastCopy is faster than TeraCopy but TeraCopy has saved my bacon a couple times from failed drives. You want to use it in conjunction with a program called Unlocker.

 

[peatcoal]

So I removed the failing hard drive from my laptop and lo and behold, the login was instantaneous. Mystery solved!
I'm currently trying to recover my files from the drive. Then, I'll be RMAing it back to WD.

Excellent. Well not excellent, but we finally got one situation solved. Sorry about the drive, but this is how things go. Hopefully they don't give you any crap about the warranty.

I've had the hard drive for almost 4 years now, and it's worked great. About a month ago, I bought my SSD, and moved the hard drive into a cheap caddy for the DVD slot of my laptop. I'm wondering if it's possible if this was related to the hard drive failure? I don't want to destroy another drive by using a dodgy caddy. At the same time, it's worked great up to now. What do you think?

I don't know. But if you don't trust the caddy you don't trust it. What's wrong with using an external hd?

The problem with an external HD is I move my laptop around a lot, and it's just not convenient to have a hard drive connected to it all the time. I do have one which I use too, but I'd rather have a second drive inside the laptop. I've done a bit of research and apparently bad sectors can't be caused by a dodgy enclosure or cable, they're an inherent problem with the drive. So I'll carry on using the caddy.

 

[PlatypusKnight]

Did you abandon the cloning?

 

[peatcoal]

Did you abandon the cloning?

I decided to leave it running while I wait for my replacement drive to arrive (it's an advance RMA). I'm doing it with my spare laptop with the two drives plugged in via USB. It started going a bit faster and has got up to 66GB now, although its still gonna take a while to finish. Maybe I should try using fastcopy, but the drive was incredibly unresponsive in Windows, and TeraCopy just wasn't working at all when I tried it before I started cloning it, so I'm not sure it will work.

 

[PlatypusKnight]

If it ain't broke don't break it.

Let the cloning do it's thing and if that doesn't work then you have alternatives.