USB Hard Drive Giving Problems

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I have a 320GB external Western Digital Lighted Combo hard drive. Recently it
has started giving me problems on my computer. I've got the error "delayed
write failed" so I checked on the WD website to see if any solution was there
for this and it directed me to this page -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908673/en-us
Can I download this fix from anywhere? Is there any other solution to this
problem? I ran the WD Diagnostic test on my machine but it didn't complete &
froze in the midst of scanning. Ran a quick test through WD Diagnostic tools
on my laptop & it passed without any errors.
 
manu08 said:
I have a 320GB external Western Digital Lighted Combo hard drive. Recently it
has started giving me problems on my computer. I've got the error "delayed
write failed" so I checked on the WD website to see if any solution was there
for this and it directed me to this page -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908673/en-us
Can I download this fix from anywhere? Is there any other solution to this
problem? I ran the WD Diagnostic test on my machine but it didn't complete &
froze in the midst of scanning. Ran a quick test through WD Diagnostic tools
on my laptop & it passed without any errors.
Click to expand...


According to the KB, this hotfix is only available by calling Microsoft
support. Obtaining hotfixes such as this one is free and rapid. It should
be no more than a quick telephone call to a support technician, and a
brief wait for the hotfix to be e-mailed.
 
Well, I called them up & they said I should call back in a few hours because
they are upgrading their system for hotfixes or something like that.

The desktop has USB 2.0 & the laptop has USB 1.1. Also, it is not connected
in the front USB port, it's in the rear port & yes I've tried connecting it
to another USB port & the same thing happens. Files transfer to the hard
drive but they keep pausing in between the transfer & the light on the hard
drive that shows it's being used (it's red in my one) it usually flickers
continously during a transfer, now in the midst of a transfer it just
randomly disappears for 5 - 10 seconds & then appears back after that pause.
I reinstalled Windows XP Home Edition on my desktop very very recently.

Now the problem has gotten a little worse, actually a lot worse. I
transferred about 20GB of files to my hard drive just now & restarted my
computer after that. Can't remember if I removed the hard drive through
'safely remove hardware', I think I did cause I never forget to almost 99% of
the time. Now the drive is being shown as 'local disk' & when I try to access
it I get "The drive is unreadable. The files are either corrupted or (I can't
remember what the other one was, sorry)." Connected it my laptop and tried
accessing it, got the same error message. Changed the USB cable, got the same
error message. Connected it through Firewire, same error message. Since it
was working perfectly fine on the laptop before I've initiated an "Extended
Test" through WD Diagnostics to see if it comes up with anything. Also just
before that in WD Diagnostics when I checked the hard drive properties, for
health it said "warning". I have a feeling the drive has died out on me, is
there any way I could recover my files myself? I've got about 200GB of files
 
The error message is,
"E:/ is not accessible.
The file or directory is either corrupted or unreadable."
 
manu08 said:
Well, I called them up & they said I should call back in a few hours because
they are upgrading their system for hotfixes or something like that.

The desktop has USB 2.0 & the laptop has USB 1.1. Also, it is not connected
in the front USB port, it's in the rear port & yes I've tried connecting it
to another USB port & the same thing happens. Files transfer to the hard
drive but they keep pausing in between the transfer & the light on the hard
drive that shows it's being used (it's red in my one) it usually flickers
continously during a transfer, now in the midst of a transfer it just
randomly disappears for 5 - 10 seconds & then appears back after that pause.
I reinstalled Windows XP Home Edition on my desktop very very recently.

Now the problem has gotten a little worse, actually a lot worse. I
transferred about 20GB of files to my hard drive just now & restarted my
computer after that. Can't remember if I removed the hard drive through
'safely remove hardware', I think I did cause I never forget to almost 99% of
the time. Now the drive is being shown as 'local disk' & when I try to access
it I get "The drive is unreadable. The files are either corrupted or (I can't
remember what the other one was, sorry)." Connected it my laptop and tried
accessing it, got the same error message. Changed the USB cable, got the same
error message. Connected it through Firewire, same error message. Since it
was working perfectly fine on the laptop before I've initiated an "Extended
Test" through WD Diagnostics to see if it comes up with anything. Also just
before that in WD Diagnostics when I checked the hard drive properties, for
health it said "warning". I have a feeling the drive has died out on me, is
there any way I could recover my files myself? I've got about 200GB of files
on it & do not have a back up of the stuff. Please help me asap.
Click to expand...


Starting to get a little dicey. The question now is whether the hard drive
has failed or has the external drive electronics failed. The only way to
test this is to remove the hard drive, if possible, and test in a known,
working external USB case or as a slave drive (jumpered accordingly) in a
computer.
 
Ok I cancelled the "extended test" I was running on the laptop because it was
saying it would take over 50 hours to complete it, probably cause of USB 1.1.
Instead I did a "quick test" through WD Diagnostics on the desktop & well it
took 5 mins where as it should have taken about a min (because of the random
pauses in trying to read the data) & this test passed. :S Now I'm going to
run an "extended test" on the desktop since its USB 2.0 it should be faster
than the laptop even with its random pauses.
This hard drive is about 6 months old & still under warranty so wouldn't
removing it from the case void the warranty? Is there no software that can
attempt to recover the data from a RAW hard drive?
 
The extended test stopped after having run for about 15 mintues & when I
clicked show test results this is what it gave me,
"Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 08-Too many bad sectors detected."
Now what? Should I attempt a Windows Check Disk on it & tick 'automatically
fix file system errors' & 'search for and attempt recovery of bad sectors' or
will this be pointless as well?
 
manu08 said:
The extended test stopped after having run for about 15 mintues & when I
clicked show test results this is what it gave me,
"Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 08-Too many bad sectors detected."
Now what? Should I attempt a Windows Check Disk on it & tick 'automatically
fix file system errors' & 'search for and attempt recovery of bad sectors' or
will this be pointless as well?
Click to expand...

Ouch...the hard drive has evidently failed. In the rare occasions when
the user does not have a backup anywhere else, the drive is passed on to
the recovery specialists. Normally, because having a backup meeans just
that, the drive is returned for warranty service, which means the loss of
everything on it. But it would not perturb this drive any more without
first getting a professional opinion since there is not a backup for the
files already on it.
 
Yes, I would execute the Check Disk Tool as you have described since, as I
see it, there is little you have to lose. You already have problems and you
can hope that this tool will enable recovery.
Gene K
 
Nothing, the checkdisk utility gave me nothing. I had left my computer &
after about 10 minutes when I looked back at the screen the checkdisk utility
had "vanished". I think it probably didn't finish. Where can I find out what
the result of it could be?
I found this data recovery software & it seems to work so I'm recovering all
my files & spreading them out on my 2 laptops, 3 internal hard drives & my
ipod so that I can hopefully have enough space by combining all those
together. After I recover my files should I get the drive replaced or should
I try to re-initialize the disk first cause that is what the WD website says.
 
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