External Hard Drive Problems

[SgtBuddy]

I have a Acomdata 80GB Firewire external Harddrive. (Hot deal back in the day)

It really has never performed to my satisfaction. I chalked it up to new technology and buggy compatibility. I am running WinXP Pro.

There is no help on the acomdata website. The FAQ is about it and it is just plain....sad.

I am going to go out and shop around for a replacement and put this thing in the "box of lost computer part souls"

I was getting Delayed Write Failed errors when doing file transfers. Sometimes is would run for days without problems. It was random AFAIK. This drive holds multimedia (MP3, MPG. AVI, etc). It is used for storage and playback. I heard firewire is excellent for this. Movies (like Simpsons episodes) played back choppy at times and the constant errors caused major instability. I had to restart the machine to get the drive to come back online. Movies plaved from the system harddrive showed fine.

I was using the 1394 port on my Audigy. I just got a new Abit AT7 and used it's firewire ports and it didn't help. So....

I tried to reformat the drive. This drive cannot be formatted. Too big for Fat32. NTFS always fails at the last step...writing directory system or something. I don't know what 1394 to ATA chip it has. I am not thinking Oxford 911.

Any ideas on what is wrong with this thing? Waranty is out.

Doesn't work well in Win2K either. I wasn't looking for stellar performance when I got it, but new reviews say these things can be system hard drive replacements! Not this thing. (Purchased not too long ago....Earlier this year....no reciept...grr...)

 

[SgtBuddy]

Went out and bought a WD 80GB drive and a Pyro USB 2.0 chassis. This thing rocks. It is rock solid. I am thrashing it now. Playing 5 vids, and doing two separate file transfers and not a hiccup.

That firewire drive I had must have been defective. I wonder if I can find the receipt for it.

 

[dakarm]

Have you tried removing the drive from the case and attaching it directly to the on-board IDE then try accessing it?

If you still have problems, then find the manufacturer of the drive and run one of their utility that checks the drive. I know WD and Maxtor have utilities to low level format the drive (btw that is destructive so make sure you back up your data).

Since your warranty is over anyways wont hurt to try.

I would guess that the IDE to 1394 converter board in the chassis is starting to go bad or is going bad or the cable is going bad.

If it's not then you can put the drive back in after you format it and see if that works for you or not.