CRC errors on a USB harddisk

[name]

Hello.
Lately, I've been having some problems with a portable USB harddisk
and I'm puzzled how to resolve them.
I use a cheap USB enclosure for a 200 GB maxtor disk. I've run the
maxblast utility for windows which said it enabled support for large
drives.
I can check the drive in win XP and it doesn't report any errors on the
drive, even when I perform a surface scan. However, when I use the
drive and copy files from it to another drive, this fails with a CRC
(cyclic redundency check) error.
Does anyone know what might be causing it and how to recover from this
problem?

Thanks in advance for any feedback on this issue, kind regards, Niek

 

[Rod Speed]

Lately, I've been having some problems with a portable
USB harddisk and I'm puzzled how to resolve them.

I use a cheap USB enclosure for a 200 GB maxtor disk. I've run the
maxblast utility for windows which said it enabled support for large drives.

I can check the drive in win XP and it doesn't report any
errors on the drive, even when I perform a surface scan.
However, when I use the drive and copy files from it to another
drive, this fails with a CRC (cyclic redundency check) error.

Does anyone know what might be causing
it and how to recover from this problem?

Try one of the other USB ports and see if that makes any difference on that.

Try a different USB cable, not all are that great with USB2,

 

[name]

Try one of the other USB ports and see if that makes any difference on that.

Try a different USB cable, not all are that great with USB2,

I doubt that could be the problem since the disk appeared to work ok
for a long time. Only lately when the disk starts to get relatively
full (10 gb of free space left) I encounter these problems.

 

[McSpreader]

I doubt that could be the problem since the disk appeared to
work ok for a long time. Only lately when the disk starts to get
relatively full (10 gb of free space left) I encounter these
problems.

Remove the HD from the enclosure and temporarily connect it to one
of your PC's IDE ribbon cables, then run the mfr's diagnostic
utility.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hello.
Lately, I've been having some problems with a portable USB harddisk
and I'm puzzled how to resolve them.
I use a cheap USB enclosure for a 200 GB maxtor disk. I've run the
maxblast utility for windows which said it enabled support for large
drives.
I can check the drive in win XP and it doesn't report any errors on the
drive, even when I perform a surface scan. However, when I use the
drive and copy files from it to another drive, this fails with a CRC
(cyclic redundency check) error.
Does anyone know what might be causing it and how to recover from this
problem?

Thanks in advance for any feedback on this issue, kind regards, Niek

The disk does use CRC only in the IDE interface. This is not
a surface problem. More likely a problem with the enclosure,
maybe too tight timing the disk cannot follow because of
fragmented data or the like. Can you mount the disk direktly
on an IDE interface and try this again?

Arno

 

[name]

The disk does use CRC only in the IDE interface. This is not
a surface problem. More likely a problem with the enclosure,
maybe too tight timing the disk cannot follow because of
fragmented data or the like. Can you mount the disk direktly
on an IDE interface and try this again?

Arno

I bought the disk because I don't have any room to build in another
harddrive, so that isn't going to be easy.
I did use the drive internally in another computer temporarily and it
seemed to work ok. However, I did not try to fill up the drive with
files to check if there would be any problems when subsequently trying
to copy the files back to another disk.
Perhaps I'll do that to see if that works. But suppose that doesn't
give any problems, does that mean the USB enclosure is worthless?
I do notice the enclosure (which is from metal) doesn't have a fan and
tends to get quite hot.

Can diskdrives be mounted vertically as well as horizontally without
having to reformat them completely?

 

[Eric Gisin]

You should look up error message in eventvwr.

Most likely the error comes from the USB driver,
which indicates problems with host controller, IDE bridge, or USB cable.

If anyone's interested, here part of the USB 1.1 spec:

4.5.1 Error Detection

The core bit error rate of the USB medium is expected to be close to that of
a backplane and any glitches
will very likely be transient in nature. To provide protection against such
transients, each packet includes
error protection fields. When data integrity is required, such as with
lossless data devices, an error
recovery procedure may be invoked in hardware or software.

The protocol includes separate CRCs for control and data fields of each packet.
A failed CRC is considered to indicate a corrupted packet.
The CRC gives 100% coverage on single- and double-bit errors.

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

I doubt that could be the problem since the
disk appeared to work ok for a long time.

All problems show up sometime.

Only lately when the disk starts to get relatively full
(10 gb of free space left) I encounter these problems.

OK, you should have said that in your original.

Where are you actually getting the CRC error reported, at the XP level ?

Guess its possible its something strange with the IDE/USB bridge in the
box, but its hard to see why that should only be seen with little free space.

Its certainly possible that a very hot drive could have problems
with access to the highest LBA numbers of sectors, but hard to
see why that would result in CRC errors visible at the XP level.

 

[Rod Speed]

I bought the disk because I don't have any room to build
in another harddrive, so that isn't going to be easy.

I did use the drive internally in another computer temporarily
and it seemed to work ok. However, I did not try to fill up the
drive with files to check if there would be any problems when
subsequently trying to copy the files back to another disk.

Best to try that, tho its hard to see why it should produce CRC
errors at the XP level unless you have described that poorly.

Perhaps I'll do that to see if that works.

Yeah, I would, just because the symptoms dont really
fit any failure mode, so more info would be useful.

But suppose that doesn't give any problems,
does that mean the USB enclosure is worthless?

Still hard to say. Its possible that only seeing the effect
with little free space is an illusion and you are actually
just seeing the problem in the warmer weather instead,
in which case it isnt necessarily the USB enclosure.

I do notice the enclosure (which is from metal)
doesn't have a fan and tends to get quite hot.

So the problem might just have shown up with warmer weather.

Can diskdrives be mounted vertically as well as horizontally
without having to reformat them completely?

Yes, the reformat is long gone. It only applied with
stepper motor head actuator drives which havent
been seen for more than a decade or more now.

And you cant format the drive anyway in the sense of the
servo info. All a format does is write zeros thru the drive now.

 

[name]

All problems show up sometime.


OK, you should have said that in your original.

Yes, sorry for that omission.

Where are you actually getting the CRC error reported, at the XP level ?

Yep, when I try to copy a file in windows explorer (or windows
commander).

 

[name]

Best to try that, tho its hard to see why it should produce CRC
errors at the XP level unless you have described that poorly.


Yeah, I would, just because the symptoms dont really
fit any failure mode, so more info would be useful.

I hope to try that out in a few days and will report if any problems
are encountered filling the disk up while it is installed internally
and trying to copy the contents to another disk. Although it might take
longer than that if it turns out I first need to burn a bunch of stuff
to free up the necessary diskspace.

Still hard to say. Its possible that only seeing the effect
with little free space is an illusion and you are actually
just seeing the problem in the warmer weather instead,
in which case it isnt necessarily the USB enclosure.


So the problem might just have shown up with warmer weather.

The weather hasn't been exceptionally warm over the past few days when
I first encountered the problem. I also tried letting the disk cool
down by turning it off for a while and that didn't make any difference.

 

[name]

You should look up error message in eventvwr.

I'm not familiar with that utility. Where do I find this eventviewer?

Most likely the error comes from the USB driver,
which indicates problems with host controller, IDE bridge, or USB cable.

If anyone's interested, here part of the USB 1.1 spec:

4.5.1 Error Detection

The core bit error rate of the USB medium is expected to be close to that of
a backplane and any glitches
will very likely be transient in nature. To provide protection against such
transients, each packet includes
error protection fields. When data integrity is required, such as with
lossless data devices, an error
recovery procedure may be invoked in hardware or software.

The protocol includes separate CRCs for control and data fields of each packet.
A failed CRC is considered to indicate a corrupted packet.
The CRC gives 100% coverage on single- and double-bit errors.

[..]

Didn't they fix these problems with USB 2?

 

[Rod Speed]

I'm not familiar with that utility. Where do I find this eventviewer?

He's talking about the event viewer in XP computer management.

Didn't they fix these problems with USB 2?

Nothing to do with those, this is real corrupted packets
that can be due to a bad cable or faulty USB port.

The main question in your case is the lack
of the free space just a coincidence or not.

I'd certainly try another USB port and cable, just because
thats rather easier to try than moving the drive to a PC.

 

[Eric Gisin]

I'm not familiar with that utility. Where do I find this eventviewer?

You can Start | Run - eventvwr or use Computer Management.

 

[name]

You can Start | Run - eventvwr or use Computer Management.

Ok, here is a screenshot of the info displayed by eventvwr regarding
the error generated when attempting to copy a file from the USB drive
to another drive:

http://www.ibbu.nl/~nsprakel/screen_shot.jpg

I did change the USB cable to a different port (that still results in
the same CRC data error), but trying out another cable is more
difficult since I only have one and don't like the idea of buying
another cable just to try out if the problem is a faulty cable (the
cable came with the USB enclosure).

 

[Rod Speed]

Eric Gisin wrote

Ok, here is a screenshot of the info displayed by eventvwr
regarding the error generated when attempting to copy a
file from the USB drive to another drive:

http://www.ibbu.nl/~nsprakel/screen_shot.jpg

That is basically saying that the disk itself has a bad block on it.
That would explain why it only showed up once it was pretty full,
presumably the bad block(s) are towards the end of the physical drive.

I did change the USB cable to a different port (that still results in
the same CRC data error), but trying out another cable is more
difficult since I only have one and don't like the idea of buying
another cable just to try out if the problem is a faulty cable (the
cable came with the USB enclosure).

It doesnt look like a USB problem at all. Try running
the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic on the drive.

 

[name]

That is basically saying that the disk itself has a bad block on it.
That would explain why it only showed up once it was pretty full,
presumably the bad block(s) are towards the end of the physical drive.

But shouldn't such problems normally be detected by error checking in
windows when it includes a surface scan?

It doesnt look like a USB problem at all. Try running
the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic on the drive.

Yep, but I presume that means booting from a floppy and having the
drive
mounted internally or would it also be possible to check USB drives
with the bootable diagnostic utility from maxtor?

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

But shouldn't such problems normally be detected by
error checking in windows when it includes a surface scan?

The surface scan is read only, presumably the problem is with writes.

Check the SMART stats on the drive, that should show the bad sectors.

Yep, but I presume that means booting from
a floppy and having the drive mounted internally

That would certainly simplify things. I wouldnt personally
boot from a floppy tho, I'd use one of the bootable CDs that
has the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics on the CD.

or would it also be possible to check USB drives
with the bootable diagnostic utility from maxtor?

I havent checked what maxtor has done with diags for USB lately.

Certainly easiest to try that route initially.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

The surface scan is read only, presumably the problem is with writes.

You don't get errror messages on writes, clueless. You get them on reads.
Write errors go undetected (unless they are sector not found errors).
They show up on the reads afterwards.

 

[name]

The surface scan is read only, presumably the problem is with writes.

The problem specifically occurs when I copy files FROM the usb drive TO
another drive, never the other way around.
I don't get error msgs when I put files on the usb drive or when I
delete those files, only when I copy them to another drive.

Check the SMART stats on the drive, that should show the bad sectors.

Where do I find those SMART stats?

That would certainly simplify things. I wouldnt personally
boot from a floppy tho, I'd use one of the bootable CDs that
has the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics on the CD.


I havent checked what maxtor has done with diags for USB lately.

Certainly easiest to try that route initially.

Hopefully maxtor has a diagnostic utility with usb support which can be
burned to a bootable CD (though I doubt it from my last look at their
support webpage). Perhaps I'll see if there is some utility to
extensively scan and check the usb disk in norton system works first.