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Probs with backup on USB2 external HD

N

Niege

Senior member
I originally posted this in General Hardware but I think this may the more appropriate forum:

Having had a number of near misses and one actual incident of critical data loss I set up an external HD (Seagate 160 in a Metal Gear USB 2.0 external box (proprietary drivers installed.) Now when I try to use backup software (two different programs) or synch software or even a large scale copy operation (third program) I often get a Windows error saying the 'delayed write' and that the info has not been saved.

I'm running Athlon Thunderbird 1.2 OC'd to 1.35, 768MB, on an Iwill K266-R board, W2K with SP4 and all other current updates. I checked Device Manager and nothing appears to be wrong. I think I remember from long ago that there was some way of changing the write parameters for a drive, but I don't remember that anymore. I also don't know if that would apply to a USB drive.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!
 
Look at the drive properties in Device Manager and make sure "Optimize for Quick Removal" is selected on the Policies tab. Generally that is already done with external drives I think though. That prevents Windows from caching the data (delayed write"). However I've still had instances of getting the delayed write error even with caching disabled, and when I hadn't even unplugged the drive. I haven't bothered trying multiple USB drive converters or anything, but I'm tending to think it was due to a flaky converter. Doesn't happen with my Firewire connections, I hardly use the USB drive.
 
You're running an older mobo and early USB ports were prone to data loss with high speed devices like an external hard drive. I see this all the time when trying to backup data from client's computers.

I'd recommend installing a good quality add-on USB 2.0 card like a Belkin.

This can also happen if there's another device on the USB bus that's mis-behaving. I've seen defective compact flash card readers cause problems for instance. Keep in mind that a USB device connected to any other port on the system can interfere with any other one. Doesn't have to be on the same pair.

You also no not want the external HDD running through a USB hub - it should be going straight to a port on the computer.

Hope this helps...
 
Thanks Evermore and Penguin. I'm using W2K so I don't have a Policies tab in my Device Manager. However, I was running it through a hub into a an add-on USB card. I put the HD direct to the PC card and now it works. You were both right! Many thanks!
 
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