OT: delayed write failed on external drives?

ken c wrote on 4/7/2006, 3:10 PM
I'm having a problem with writing to external drives on my win2k pc... when trying to copy files, I frequently get:

- error - delayed write failed
- mft ...

type error messages...

this fix from microsoft doesn't seem to work:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=321733


anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? it just affects external drives...from IEEE connections, they lose connection arbitrarily to the pc... unplugging/replugging the ext. drives works to get them back, but it's a hassle..

anyone know of any fixes for this? much appreciated,

ken

ps here's a long long thread elsewhere on it.. no real fixes tho..:
http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=23&threadid=50468&enterthread=y

Comments

jrazz wrote on 4/7/2006, 3:18 PM
Here is a prior post.

There are tons of causes and tons of probable fixes. Have you tried running your firewire drives on seperate firewire cards? I added another card and now my firewired drives play nice- before I got the delayed write error all the time.

j razz
ken c wrote on 4/7/2006, 3:21 PM
thanks... I'll try that...

problem is though, I've got 14 external drives... :p

keeping track of "who's daisy chained to who, and what card are they plugged in", can get a bit hectic...

ken
TomE wrote on 4/7/2006, 3:24 PM
I struggled with this problem Ken. I RMA'd one Maxtor drive (160 gb) and they sent me a 200 GB drive to replace it. It worked fine for several months and then the dreaded delayed write failure.

I just updated (not gonna call it an upgrade) to Service Pack 2 for WinXP Pro and applied the fix that was available from Microsoft (search the posts here for a link) I have not seen any delayed write errors yet. I am hoping that they are gone for good now.

Not sure if any ot this is designed to work with Win2k you might find a fix though.

Good luck it is a PITA when your external drive fails in the middle of a project. I will never trust them again.

-TomE
ken c wrote on 4/7/2006, 3:38 PM
agree... but the drive is fine ...trying to copy an external maxtor (which I don't trust anymore), over to a WD external....
they both work, just gotta unplug/replug it back in ... I'm trying that fix though re IEEEs on different boards this time... I'll post back to tell how it goes... appreciate the ideas... sounds like a pervasive problem, googling that..

hmm still getting errors on separate IEEE cards, one to each ext drive.. no other ext. drives active... ah well... it does work, just have to repeat over and over til it "takes", a pita..

ken
johnmeyer wrote on 4/7/2006, 4:11 PM
If these are Firewire drives, then I can tell you that I used to have that problem until I applied the Windows Firewire patch. There are two different problems, and two different solutions, depending on whether you have SP1 or SP2.

Here is the patch for SP1:

Firewire 1394 SP1 Solutions

I don't have the link handy for the SP2 patch, but you'll find it on the Microsoft Knowledgebase site.

Don't be put off by the fact that the patch description doesn't seem to fit your problem.

The only downside of the patch is that it does result in a slightly slower transfer speed. This won't affect captures -- the drives are still many multiples faster than what is needed to capture -- but it will make your simple file copy operations a little slower.

ken c wrote on 4/7/2006, 4:33 PM
hi - thanks John... I'll see if there's a similar patch to my windows 2000 platform .. it does sound like a similar issue .. eg frequently I'll have one or more of my daisy-chained external firewire drives say an mft error/can't find it/data lost... and I've got to power off/back on, for the pc to "see it" again...

major pita..

I just got a lian-lee huge enclosure from newegg, I may end up putting a few more 400 gig internal drives in it, if I can keep the overall system cool..

checking my mobo cpu temp, it's Way too hot at 79C ... using the asus pc util software monitor... even on cold boot it's at 59C .. so a few things to fix, asap... before I end up frying the cpu/mobo..

it's more the time/hassle in lost work, than the $, to replace the stuff..


ken