OT: External Drive DWF failure problem solved

ken c wrote on 4/20/2006, 5:46 PM

Having a lot of maxtor/WD external drives was driving me nuts, because I kept getting "delayed write failed" problems when copying files. Also got bsods and driver failure warnings, a lot of rebooting, re-plugging them in. Not a pretty picture.

But being the testing type of guy I am, I decided to buy 2 new firewire PCI cards to see if one of them would fix it ... and sure enough here it is:

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16815103103

This card, which on the box says Kouwell/Koutec Ioflex-FW4, is a terrific firewire card - not a single lockup or DWF since installing it. Highly recommended if you keep getting connection interrupt errors, DWF /delayed write failure problems with WD/maxtor external drives.

the firewire port on my mobo (asus p4c800) was causing problems, and two other pci firewire cards weren't being recognized with the drives (though they showed up fine in device mgr) .. anyways, that card above, just $20, solved all the problems. yeah!

(it's [unneccessarily] retail-boxed with software and a short cable, an OEM in static bag would've been fine)

ken

Comments

Grazie wrote on 4/21/2006, 12:18 AM

So, Ken, does this alter your opinion on external Maxtor drives?

What iS interesting is you have the "same" ASUS as I do. Now, I've elected to have data from my Daisy-chained string of MAXTORS connected to a patched-bay f/w in the front of the case. Absolutely no difference between front and rear .. But I have used the f/w to my ACEDVio Canopus card for the f/w AV<>DV<>AV for my tape deck and outs to the external monitor. I have no way of "proving" this but ever since - 2 years plus now - I separated the actual f/w data transfer from the f/w AV<>DV cards this has worked . . so far.

I'm just wondering if just too much is/was being asked of the ASUS f/w and, really great you got 'em to work, that having "another" card may just be doing the same? That is splitting the f/w load?

Truly great you have got them MAXTORS working for you. I was reading your previous threads/posts with something akin to walking on egg shells!

Cheers, and thanks for getting back here with your results,

Grazie

ken c wrote on 4/21/2006, 3:37 AM

hi Grazie ... since so many had reported failures with maxtors on other forums.. I'm still leery of those, I've bought a lot of WD ext drives instead, to use as the primaries, and using the maxtors now as backups..

good point too re separating the f/w inputs on different cards, that seems to help as well ...

actually since I just bought this humungous lian-lee case (great!) and monster power supply, I was thinking of just adding a few SATA drives in addition to the 4 IDE ones... any ideas on that? I've never bought nor used SATA drives, but the ASUS m/b can support them, though I don't know anything about them... I just have the 4 ide drives installed ...

that's another point too, eg it seems better to edit video on large avis that are on internal IDEs vs external drives anyways, since IDEs are faster I think ... vs having to edit over firewire cables.. any ideas?

thx,

ken

craftech wrote on 4/21/2006, 4:41 AM

I just buy the same drives and use a single thumbscrew to hold it in it's internal bay. When I want to swap it for an empty drive it takes less than a minute to do so.

John

ztalk112 wrote on 4/21/2006, 10:20 AM

Ken,

In case you haven't already run across it and you find the need to know more about DWF syndrome, take a look at this page http://www.bustrace.com/delayedwrite/index.htm

There's also a guy on the SM DV Rack forum currently experiencing the same problem.

Regards,

Gary