Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition 1TB reads then slows down

[ProMod]

I have a WD MyBook Studio Edition 1TB that's been OK for about a year, but recently it's been acting weird so I ordered an advance replacement from WD and am in the process of transferring all my stuff to the replacement drive.

The old drive will read and write fine for a few seconds, then it just slows way down. For example, I am copying files over right now, and it just blazed through about 500 MB in a few seconds, and it's taken it about 15 minutes to get to 550 MB. Obviously something is wrong, but I'm looking for any advice on how to keep this thing alive or speed it up for just a few minutes while I get everything off of it. Any suggestions?

 

[*LTD*]

It might depend on the size of the files it's reading.

Have you done any diagnostics on the drive? I recommend TechTool Pro. It costs, but it's well worth the money. I also recommend Data Rescue II. So these two tools are your two lines of defense in terms of a) diagnostics and b) data recovery in case something goes wrong. Both of these tools saved my rear on at least one occasion.

So perform a diagnostic of the drive. Do it in Disk Utility first and see what it tells you.