Usb Data Loss Under WinXP

[Jekill]

Hi, I decided to write to msfn cause I need some expert opinion about a problem that I'm encountering under WinXP.

Basic information:

I work with an unattended version of "winxp professional", made by me.

I made it following two methods:

1. I slipstreamed the sp2 through "command line".

2. I downloaded, from an italian board called wintricks, almost all the win updates and integrated a great part of them using "nLite".

- I had to try several times, cause a part of them faced problems being integrated in win installation.

- I behaved in this way: every time that the program returned me an error about an update with problems being integrated, I pushed ok and it continued slipstreaming the remaining till the end.

I'm still not sure if it's been a clean operating method, but I worked with this version for half an year.

The only unusual thing that I faced, since I've been using this win version, is that when I work for a long time with explorer, copying, cutting or moving folders and duplicating files but, especially, when I move big quantities of files, like gigabytes, I encounter most of the times a particular problem which happens in two ways:

1. explorer.exe crashes, notyfing the well-known message about sending infos to microsoft concerning the problem.

- these times, explorer refreshes by itself.

2. explorer.exe crashes and then the debug application drwtsn32.exe. A part of these times, I have to restart by myself the explorer process.

(Maybe, it would depend, also, on some program that I use to color the folders - like icofolder - , I don't know.)

Now, I'll explain the core of the question.

A couple of months ago, I bought an external hard disk box, for drives up to 500GB, and I put a 320GB "Seagate Barracuda" hard drive in it.

From the beginning, I faced a hard data loss during data trasfers from pc to the external hard disk, connected via "USB".

I noticed it especially on RAR archives.

I changed the product with a new one and tested it with RAR archives and there was no data loss.

After a few months, the hard drive was full and I decided to test the integrity of the archive. The files contained was lossless audio tracks, so I could test it with appropriate programs, cause this kinds of file embedd already checksum infos in them.

Well, I found that 1/10 of the archive was partially damaged.

After a test, I noticed that I had still a more marginal, but always present, data loss during the trasfer process and this was appropriately ensured by other tests made by me, using md5 checksum files.

Now, I'm asking: could it be that I was wrong and that the data loss, during the file trasfers from pc to the usb external box, didn't depend on the electronics of the "usb to ide" adapter but, rather, on win xp unattended installation which may face problems managing data transfers to an usb device?

The fact is that it seems that I didn't have problems with other usb hard dives and pens.

Thank you very much for listening and bye.

Any suggestion is very well accepted.

Hi, Jekill...

Edited August 6, 2007 by Jekill