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USB 2.0 2.5'' laptop enclosure and Delayed Write Failed Error

L

lostatlantis

Senior member
I have a Fujitsu MHT2060AH 60gb laptop hd in one of those USB 2.0 aluminum enclosure ($10 or so). It's been working great until recently, when the drive will freeze up (the status light stuck at red as if it's busy) and XP will also freeze, reporting "Delayed Write Failed".

The only way to fix this is to unplug the USB enclosure. The frequency of this problem is getting higher and higher, especially when I am transferring large files (>300MB).

The unit has two USB plugs, one's for additonal power only. I tried plugging both in; that doesn't help. It works fine with the main plug since I got it.

I also tried disabling hard disk spin down. That doesn't help either.

My sytem is a Gateway laptop, M505X (Centrino 1.4 with 3 USB 2.0 ports) running WinXP SP1.

One sidenote - recently I've used a lot of space on the drive, right now it's about 3 gigs free of the 60 gb. I don't know if this is an issue or not.

In windows device manager, this enclosure shows up as "USB 2.0 Mass Storage Device" instead of showing the actua drive info (i know other enclosures would show info such as "Fujitsu MHT2060AH"). I think this would help in identifying the enclosure's chipset, and if there's a related bug and fix.


Right now I don't mind unplugging and plugging it back as a fix. However I am worried it's hurting the HD unnecessarily, or maybe the HD is dying on me. I don't have a way to back up all the stuff I got so far either.
 
#1 cause of USB issues is too much power drawing from the slot. Try your transfer with the drive being the only USB device plugged in. If that doesn't work it might be time for another $10 enclosure.

I've had problems myself with various brands of those. I switched to firewire and haven't had any problems since.
 
hmm... I did start using a Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro with a MS wireless explorer daisy chained into its two port hub. Before I was just using the wireless explorer.

For now, I am plugging both USB connectors of the enclosure in. If this solves the problem, then it's power related.

Do firewire enclosures require extra AC adapter if you have a 6-pin plug? My laptop has both 6 and 4 pin.
 
well, the same thing just happened with both main USB plug as well as aux USB power plug in. I heard the drive make a spin down noise (for a second or so) as if it's trying to power off. At this point the enclosure LED is still green. But when I click on the drive in My Computer, system freezes and LED is not red. At this time, the drive made the same noise again just before the LED turns red.

Apparently I left power save on for HDs. I am testing this again now with hard drive spin down disabled.
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
Delayed Write should be DISABLED for external (FW/USB) drives.

.bh.
Click to expand...


If by disabled you mean setting the drive for quick removal under device manager, then that has been the setting ever since I got this setup going.

If I am missing another setting on delayed write, please post back.
 
Zepper is right - turn off Write Caching for any external removable drive.

In Device Manager, Hardware, right click on the drive in question - then select Properies. Then the Policies tab, and then "optimize for Quick Removal." That choice negates write caching - which is ther other choice.
 
yep like I said that was the setting since I started using this enclosure/fujitsu HD.

Another point I came across while searching for info on google was XP Sp1 vs SP2. It's inconclusive at best, but nontheless something to think about. I am running SP1 with all available patches installed. In my Add/Remove window, I see several (SP2) hotfixes listed. I wonder if these newer, SP2 related patches are to blame?

And yeah I am sure I am running SP1. My friend has SP2 and I've played with it.
 
Yeah, if you're trying to run that external off USB power, then you may need more power. Either via a self-powered USB hub or a regulated wall wart. Or you could bring a standard molex drive power connector to the front or rear panel of your desktop. They have such things at SVC.com and perhaps jab-tech.com.
. But if you are getting "delayed write" failure, then it's pretty obvious that "delayed write" is NOT disabled - so a system software update may be necessary. I'm sure there are USB updates in the SP2.

.bh.
 
I recently bought some seagate barracuda internal drives. i put them into some top rated (on newegg) Venus DS3 enclosures. I was transfering a large group of files from one external to another and started getting the delayed write failed error on my old thinkpad p3. so i switched the transfer to a newly built high end athlon system and got the same error - not for all of the data, just for some.

researching this i found the problem is often reported, but nowhere have i found anyone who has nailed it. i called seagate tech support and told them i was getting that error on several of their drives - the guy immediately asked if i had put it in an external housing. so delayed write failed errors are apparently not uncommon with external usb hds.

he had no cure, but he suggested that in addition to ensuring that the write cache is disabled, i should also disable power save in the usb root driver. i did this and haven't had this problem yet, but then i haven't tested it on transfering a large number of large files, but i did transfer a smaller number of large files with no problems

the way to disable powersave at the usb driver level (in xp) is to go: start -> control panel -> system -> hardware -> device manager -> universal serial bus controllers and then right click on each "usb root hub" link -> properties -> power management -> then make sure the "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" box is UNchecked - do this for each of the "usb root hub" links to make sure it is off for the hard drives (usb power save feature is not really necessary for most - if any - devices)

anyway, if i get this error again, i will post back, but so far so good.
 
thanks stevegui! :thumbsup::thumbsup:

disabling usb power save actually works for me too

i am using a cheap usb external cable (US$10) for my 2.5" laptop hd, and have been having 'delayed write failed' error for months. it also happened when i tried to write stuff to a usb flash disk as well. i gathered it was a motherboard defect at first (asus P4R800-VM), but then thought it might have to do with the external casing chipset...but in the end it's just micro$oft windows setting!

i have tried moving a total of 1855 files (1.4Gb) from external hd to internal hd, at the same time with defragment program popped up automatically to defrag the external hd, without any problems! b4 this it was almost impossible to run a defrag on my external hd.

so thank you very much for your advice! i hope many others experiencing this problem will see this post and get their problems sorted. 😉
 
One sidenote - recently I've used a lot of space on the drive, right now it's about 3 gigs free of the 60 gb. I don't know if this is an issue or not.
Click to expand...
In addition to the power management suggestion, also try disabling System Restore for the problem drive.

Control Panel > System > System Restore Tab > Status

Select the drive letter assigned to the external drive and click Properties/Options or Turn Off System Restore for this drive. Something like that, anyway.
 
The "delayed write failures" are caused because the communication between the PC and the hard drive failed while the PC was still trying to save data to the drive. Disabling write caching will get rid of the "delayed write failure" messages, but replace them with "write failure" errors, or application crashes.

The problem is that the drive enclosure and the USB controller in your PC don't get along with each other.

You may be able to find a BIOS update for your PC motherboard that improves USB compatability - I was unable to use USB drive enclosures on my Abit NF7 for nearly 12 months (delayed write errors), until Abit released a BIOS which fixed this bug.

However, in many cases, it's because of a substandard enclosure that uses a cheap buggy USB-IDE converter chip. In this case, the only option is to replace the enclosure with a different model (ideally one that uses the Oxford controller - although these are more expensive because they provide firewire as well as USB).
 
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