Delayed Write Errors - Maxtor 200g - USB 2.0 ext

[Spinman]

Having a bit of a problem - and hope someone can point me in the right direction.

I have a Maxtor 200g 8mb ATA/133 hard drive. When I hook it up to a PCI ATA/133 or PCI ATA/100 controller card - it works fine.

When I hook it up to an ADS UBS 2.0 external Drive Kit - I can read data already on the drive - but I can't write to it. It constantly generates delayed write errors.

I checked with ADS tech support - they said there were no limitation as to drive size, etc, etc, etc. According to them - it should work. I'm running XP-home SP1. One of the checks for this error is to check the system bios to be sure it is not set to force data at a higher rate than the device is capable of handling. That makes sense for an EIDE drive - but for USB?

Anyway, I checked my bios options - and don't see anything applicable (Gigabyte 8I-EXP rev 2).

Is there a drive jumper to handle the speed issue?

Other thoughts?

BTW - I'm also experiencing delayed write errors when I hook up a WD 160g drive (ata/100 2mb) to my PCI ATA/133 controller. I had to drop back to a ATA/100 controller card to resolve the errors with that drive.

So because I am experiencing the problem with both ATA/133 connected to a USB 2.0 case and an ATA/100 conncected to an ATA/133 controller - I would assume that there is something generic in my system that needs to be adjusted to resolve both problems....

[Ge0ph]

Hook up the drive

In “My Computer” right click on the drive and select “Properties”

Choose the “Hardware” tab

Highlight the drive and then click on the “Properties” button

Click on the “Policies” tab

Choose “Optimize for performance”

Click “OK”

That should do it.

[Spinman]

Been there, Done that.

Just checked again - the optimize for performance was already selected.

However, the box marked - enable write caching on this disk was not.

I checked the box and closed all the open windows.

Called it back up again, and the box was not checked. Something is erasing the entry and not permitting it to be saved.

I tried to copy something to the disk - and got the delayed write error again.

**************************

Also tried to do a disk check on the drive. Both MS and Norton would not check the disk - wanted to schedule a check after next reboot. I selected yes - but it never ran a test when rebooting. Can you do a checkdisk with a USB drive?

************************

I misstated the drive size earlier - it is a 250g drive not a 200g drive.

Despite what ADS tech support says - is there a size limitation for USD drives? Do I need to partition? Currently only one large partition for video storage.

**********************

I hooked the drive back up to my PCI ATA/100 controller card and ran a disk check. Lots of lost cluster errors (this happens everytime I hookup to ATA controller). Copies the additional data files I wanted from C:\ to the drive and hooked it back up to my USB box. Was able to read the newly transfered files w/o any problems.

***********************

[Spinman]

Also wanted to ask -

I am always unable to access the "safely remove hardward" option from the tray - it always tells me to try again later. Don't know why anything would be accessing the drive - it is only video files. I merely shut down and assume that the shutdown process will safely park the drive. Once the system is off, I power off the USB drive box. Hoping that this is not contributing to my generation of lost clusters.....

[Ge0ph]

Have you installed the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard?

[Justice]

Write Caching in XP is disabled on USB drives to allow imeddiate unplugging once the data has been "written". In 2K, you have to "Safely remove hardware" to do just that, because the data may not actually be there when you pull the plug.

[Treeman]

Spinman,

I have the same drive ala external USB. I would constantly get write delay error messages also. What I did to fix this was to hook up the drives power cord to a surge strip with on/off switch. Turn on external drive and let it power up so only green indicator light shows. Then turn on main computer.

For some reason if the drive starts up when you power on with the computer together, the info from the external drive isn't read / written to by the OS in time = write delay failure.

Hope this helps,

Treeman