Dreaded 'delayed write failed' - would this help?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Caroline
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Caroline

Hi!

Got a 60gb Maxtor drive which has been working perfectly well as the
boot drive in my last system. It's now mounted as secondary master on an
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe/Athlon XP3000/1gb Crucial RAM system which has a
Maxtor 120gb serial ATA drive as the boot drive. I really want to use
the 60gb drive for backups. That means some pretty big files from time
to time - trying to backup my boot partition is a 11gb file, for
example, and my photo collection nearly 10gb.

Using a variety of backup software, including Windows backup (forgot to
mention o/s: XP Pro/SP1), the drive sicks up with a delayed write error
usually around 4gb - 6gb file size. I've discovered I can delay the
onset of this by minimising anything else running on the system (which
puzzles me somewhat - my CPU is hardly a slouch and running around 14%
usage).

Googling the newsgroups told me a) I'm not alone and b) no-one's really
got this problem cracked. But here's what I wondered; since I'm not
getting any kind of problem on my serial ATA drive, should I get a
PATA-SATA convertor for the 60gb drive and hook it up to the other S-ATA
connection? After all, I understand the Maxtor s-ATA drives are really
PATA with the convertor built in.

Has anyone tried this solution? Is it a loopy idea, or am I on to
something? Perhaps more relevantly, is anyone out there getting the
delayed write fail errors on their SATA drive?

TIA

Caroline


Caroline Picking, (e-mail address removed)
Milton Keynes, England.
 
Ok, I gradually had it dawn on me that there was a lot more going wrong
than just the 'delayed write' business. For a start, the BIOS had
suddenly decided it was a 30gig drive not a 60gig one and.... oh, to cut
a long story short, one of the platters had gone to the Great PC In The
Sky. I've RMAed it with Maxtor and should have a replacement soon.

Hmmm... now my experience with Maxtor drives is nearly as bad as my
experience with IBM drives: 2 of each in the last 5 years or so. So who
*does* make reliable drives?
Your (and my) experience is not statistically significant. That
said I've RMA fewer WD than Maxtor the past two years.

Last Maxtor RMA returned an IBM drive with a Maxtor label stuck
on top!

--wally
 
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