How to force a delayed write to an eSATA drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter GettingByOk
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GettingByOk

Hi,

I just installed an eSATA as a backup drive. I use Windows Standby a lot,
works really well for a long time before needing to do a restart.

I'd like to shut off the eSATA so it's not running all the time and wasting
electricity. But if I put my machine on Standby and turn off the eSATA then I
get an error when I power on the eSATA. It's a cryptic error but has the
string MFT$ in it so it appears to be a Master File Table corruption, and the
drive becomes inaccessible.

The actual message says a delayed write to the drive failed and says
something about an MFT error.

To correct that, I need to do a cold shutdown of my computer and restart it.
I power down and restart the eSATA drive as well. Seems to fix itself
(almost). I'll get an error that the Recycle Bin is corrupted on the drive
and Windows deletes and rebuilds it.

Is there a way I can force Windows to do the delayed write before putting
the system on Standby so I don't have to keep the drive on all the time?
Ideally automatically, of course.

Is there a safe way to power off the drive before I put Windows on Standby?

It's inconvenient to do a cold shutdown all the time but I don't want to
keep the eSATA powered on all the time either if I can avoid it.

Thanks,
Robert
 
GettingByOk said:
Also, I'm on 32-bit Windows XP SP2.
Click to expand...

By turning off the feature you will probably slow the computer. It may be
noticeable and maybe not.

Try this: Right click My Computer. Left click Device Manager. Click the +
by Disk drives to open that listing. Find your drive and right click on
it's name. Left click on Properties. Click Policies tab. Turn off the
Optimize for performance and click on Optimize for quick removal (if
available.) OK out and you should not have the issue again.

What this does is turn off the write cache (buffer) for the drive and forces
the computer to write immediately to a drive. The write cache writes to the
drive normally (when the Optimize for Performance is turned on) only when
the processor and data path to the drive is idle or the cache becomes full.
With it turned off it will cause the processor to immediately write to the
drive even though it is busy.

Let us know if this helps or if issues remain.
 
Thank you.

Quick question, is this a session-level or system-level change? meaning, can
I do this right before I shut down to flush the write buffer? Then enable it
again.....

.....or do I have to reboot for the change to take effect?

Ideally if I could do this at-will (i.e., flush the write buffer, put
computer in Standby, wake up computer up, then Optimize for Performance
again) then I could have the write buffer available while I'm working and
turn it off when I want to do Standby....

Robert
 
GettingByOk said:
Thank you.

Quick question, is this a session-level or system-level change? meaning,
can
I do this right before I shut down to flush the write buffer? Then enable
it
again.....

....or do I have to reboot for the change to take effect?

Ideally if I could do this at-will (i.e., flush the write buffer, put
computer in Standby, wake up computer up, then Optimize for Performance
again) then I could have the write buffer available while I'm working and
turn it off when I want to do Standby....

Robert
Click to expand...

I'm actually not sure if the change takes effect immediately or on the net
boot but I think that it takes place once you OK out of the change area.
You can test it to find the definitive answer however, it would be a real
pain in the a$$ to do that each time.

Have you tested the fix I mentioned to see if it does solve your problem.
If it doesn't it would be a moot point anyway.
 
Ran into a problem preventing me from trying either of your suggestions.....

Now my computer will not boot if the eSATA drive is turned on. It hangs
right before it finishes loading the BIOS. About 95% of the way before the
white progress bar finishes. Can't even hit F2 to configure or F12 to change
boot order. So I have to turn the eSATA drive off then cycle the computer.

Then of course it says it can't detect the SATA-4 device and I hit F1 to
continue.

Any ideas?
 
Hi,

My drive became completely inaccessible for a long time after your
suggestion so I couldn't try it.

I just tried it and there is no Optimize for Performance (I'm running XP
SP2) but there is a check box saying Enable Write Caching -- but it's already
unchecked. The drive seems to work now, I moved it from SATA 4 to SATA 5.
Guess I'll have to keep playing around with it......

Thanks again, and any other suggestions welcome (until this Newsgroup closes
:( )
Robert
 
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