HDD - Should I be Worried?

[zeek543]

Hey,

I've got this new Toshiba 640GB Portable HDD. I use it as a backup and to transfer files between computers. I got it 1 week ago.
I ran all the tests in HDtune on it. It says its fine and all.
But what worries me is the drop off in the read speed at the end of the read test. Is this a problem? Signal of failure? or is it normal? Cache running out? USB2.0 limitation?
I have run the test a few times, with nearly identical results.

[jagabo]

It's nothing to worry about. Hard drives use different data density on the inner and outer cylinders. If you look at transfer graphs of PATA or SATA drives (where the interface is faster than the drives) you'll see that they typically form a smooth curve with the highest speeds on the left and lowest speeds on the right. What's probably happening is the drives throughput on the inner cylinders of your drive has fallen below what USB 2.0 is capable of. That's typical of a 5400 rpm laptop drive.

[zeek543]

Awesomely reassuring reply, jagabo! Thanks! I figured it was something like that, just had to make sure before trusting my data with it.

[ahhaa]

uhmm... If its only a week old, and you haven't loaded it up yet, you might want to know that Officemax is right now selling the Hitachi Terabyte III external HD for only $90.

[zeek543]

ahhaa, thanks for replying, but that is a different kind of drive from what I'm using.

I have moved to using the portable 2.5 inch drives that are powered by their single usb connection.

oh and, my Toshiba drive is working great. I think that drop in read speed at the end is just what jagabo said it was.

[jagabo]

If you want to be sure, run Windows' disk error checking utility with the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" option enabled. That will read every sector of the drive looking for bad blocks (if it finds any it will mark them bad so they won't be used in the future). It will take a long time. I'd run it overnight.