Delayed Write Errors and External Drives - Definitive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Soza
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Soza

Is there a difinitive solution to the delayed write failure that occurs with
external firewire and USB hard drives?

My setup:
Windows XP Home SP2 with a Seagate 300gb on USB2 formatted NTFS.

I have had nothing but problems with this drive and the delayed write
errors. I had the same problem with XP pro and a maxtor firewire drive.
I've read so many people's problems with this error but no-one has any real
fix for it.

It seems to be a very common problem but nobody has addressed it.
 
Is there a difinitive solution to the delayed write failure that occurs
with
external firewire and USB hard drives?

My setup:
Windows XP Home SP2 with a Seagate 300gb on USB2 formatted NTFS.

I have had nothing but problems with this drive and the delayed write
errors. I had the same problem with XP pro and a maxtor firewire drive.
I've read so many people's problems with this error but no-one has any
real
fix for it.

It seems to be a very common problem but nobody has addressed it.
Click to expand...

I have two FW drives in Vipower mobile racks, in service for two years, and
have never had errors of any kind. OS is XP Pro SP2.
 
What kind of drive are you using? I have a 2.5" laptop drive in a USB
enclosure that allegedly takes power from the USB port. Without extra
power, I used to get strange problems including delayed write errors. Now
that I supply more power, in the form of simply plugging in a 2nd USB cable
that came with the drive, errors are no more.

How does your drive get power?

--Dan
 
I'm convinced there are several different causes for this problem. At one
point could make the problem come and go by simply changing which folders on
the external drive were shared!

I have a powered USB 2.0 drive connected to a USB 2.0 PCI card with NEC chip
(eg H/W set up considered to be the best).

This long thread has one or two suggestions that seem to work _for some
people_ ....

http://forums.viaarena.com/messagev...d=50468&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

(4 pages)
 
dg said:
What kind of drive are you using? I have a 2.5" laptop drive in a USB
enclosure that allegedly takes power from the USB port. Without extra
power, I used to get strange problems including delayed write errors. Now
that I supply more power, in the form of simply plugging in a 2nd USB
cable
that came with the drive, errors are no more.

How does your drive get power?

--Dan
Click to expand...

It has it's own power supply. The problem seems to stem from the seagate
drive putting itself to sleep after about 5 mins of idle time and that
causes the delayed write failure. It seems to be an inbuilt feature of the
dve enclosure because it goes to sleep even when its disconnected from the
PC.
 
Soza said:
It has it's own power supply. The problem seems to stem from the seagate
drive putting itself to sleep after about 5 mins of idle time and that
causes the delayed write failure. It seems to be an inbuilt feature of the
dve enclosure because it goes to sleep even when its disconnected from the
PC.
Click to expand...

I don't know about you, but my enclosure was real cheap, $17 cheap. None of
the alternatives were expensive, I ended up choosing because for aesthetic
reasons. They are all so cheap, and my attitude is "give me a better
product, I will gladly pay $35 for a sweet box instead of $17 for a flaky
one". This seems like one market where we might have been priced right out
of a better product.
 
dg said:
What kind of drive are you using? I have a 2.5" laptop drive in a USB
enclosure that allegedly takes power from the USB port. Without extra
power, I used to get strange problems including delayed write errors. Now
that I supply more power, in the form of simply plugging in a 2nd USB
cable
that came with the drive, errors are no more.

How does your drive get power?
Click to expand...

These two drives have external power supplies, even though with six-pin
power connectors.
 
dg said:
I don't know about you, but my enclosure was real cheap, $17 cheap. None
of
the alternatives were expensive, I ended up choosing because for aesthetic
reasons. They are all so cheap, and my attitude is "give me a better
product, I will gladly pay $35 for a sweet box instead of $17 for a flaky
one". This seems like one market where we might have been priced right
out
of a better product.
Click to expand...

I just bought a Vipower USB2 (VP-1028) mobile rack box that fits in a 5¼"
external bay in my case, and you can swap drives all day with it. Each
drive fits in an "in-tray" (Vipower VP-15) that slides in the main housing,
and the VP-1028 has one in-tray in the package. Additional in-trays are
~$10. It has an internal fan and connects to a conventional IDE and Molex
connector for power. Works like champ and in my book beats the hell out of
alternatives, if that is you have a spare external drive bay. Here's one
link, and the cheapest price I could find ($25 beige, $26 black):

http://www.centralcomputer.com/searchresults.asp
 
Sozawrote:
My setup:
Windows XP Home SP2 with a Seagate 300gb on USB2 formatted NTFS.
Click to expand...

In the case of the Seagates, call their Technical Support and get on
record as having this issue. They'll request that you help with the
issue by asking a series of questions regarding your setup. They are
aware of this being a serious issue and are actively working on the
problem (I have a ticket open for FOUR drives, 2x300GB and 2x400GB).
 
It has it's own power supply. The problem seems to stem from the seagate
drive putting itself to sleep after about 5 mins of idle time and that
causes the delayed write failure. It seems to be an inbuilt feature of the
dve enclosure because it goes to sleep even when its disconnected from the
PC.
Click to expand...

I also have seen this with a spare Travelstar drive in a noname firewire
enclosure with a Texas Micro controller. It is externally powered, and
the only device connected on the firewire bus.

The drive works fine as long as I do continous r/w access to it, but if
I let it off for a few minutes, the drive sleeps & does not wake up
without removing & reinserting the firewire cable. I assume either the
firewire bus or the controller in the enclosure doesn't have provisions
for waking up sleeping devices? (Using this drive on XP, ME, 98SE)

(Not a big issue for me, as I only use it for temp. storage/backup.)
/Rolf
 
Hey There,

I noticed after reading through a few posts here and on other sites
that many people had the same video card I have (ATI Radeon 9600). I
then recall having this problem shortly after I installed the card.
Last night, I replaced the card with the original video card that
came with my system, and VOILA!

My Western Digital USB2/Firewire External Hard Drive (WDC1200) finally
was able to transfer files back and forth without that dreaded
"Delayed Write" error which was driving me crazy. My situation was a
bit different than the one many of you are having. For one, I was
connecting via USB2. 2nd, the problem didn't occur after
transferring large files, but rather with relatively small folders
(500 mb) that I was transferring.

I'm still not sure why the ATI Radeon interfered with the data
transfer, but my guess is that it's eating up a chunk of memory that
the HD uses. I'll try and put back the ATI card and update the
drivers later on tonight. But for now, I'm a happy guy.
 
I'm still not sure why the ATI Radeon interfered with the data
transfer, but my guess is that it's eating up a chunk of memory that
the HD uses. I'll try and put back the ATI card and update the
drivers later on tonight. But for now, I'm a happy guy.
Click to expand...

It's probably the amount of data that causes the problem. I don't
have any ATi card but I use GeForce and I use internal hard drives and
I do get occasional write issue when copying or moving files. I do
have external hard drive but it's on firewire and not used much beyond
quick and short term backup and archival of important files. never
had any problem there.
 
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