Maxtor Firewire drive problems - autoplay & write caching

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

I have a Maxtor 160GB external drive connected to my Tablet docking station
via firewire.
I have two problems with it.

1. When the Tablet is redocked, AutoPlay is triggered and wants to scan the
entire disk for every piece of music (my entire CD collection). My AutoPlay
settings for that drive (D are set to "No Action". There are no media
files in the root folder. How do I *really* stop this?
2. When the Tablet comes out of standby or hibernation, I get error messages
to the effect that Windows could not write data to D:\$Msft. 'The write
caching policy is set to "Optimize for Quick Removal" - the alternate
"Optimize for Performance" makes the problem worse.

There does not appear to be a more recent driver for the device. Windows is
completely current with public updates and patches. The Tablet edition is a
superset of Windows XP Pro SP1, so I'm not expecting any Tablet-specific
issues.

 

[Goalstate]

I had exactly the same problem, and finally solved it today. This must
be a part of "undocumented Windows," because it took me a while to
piece together the solution. Here is what worked for me:

* Open your registry by selecting Start, then Run, then entering
regedit /v as the command

NOTE: Changing registry values can make your PC unbootable, so be very
careful what you change!

* Select the topmost node ("My Computer") in the registry hierarchy.

* Search (ctrl-F) for the following value: NoDriveTypeAutoRun

* Each time you find the NoDriveTypeAutoRun value, note the registry
path that leads to it, and its original value. On my PC, the value for
these was always 0x91.

* Then, whatever that value is, change it to 0xdd. That should turn
off autoplay for everything *but* your CD drives. To turn it off for
everything, use 0xff.

* Repeat the above for all remaining occurrences of NoDriveTypeAutoRun
throughout your registry. Be sure to note each original value and the
path to it, in case you want to restore it later.

* Close the registry and re-boot your PC. These registry values will
not take effect until AFTER you have rebooted.

* After rebooting, to test the success of the procedure, try detaching
your firewire drive (using the usual safe removal process, of course)
and then re-attaching it. Autoplay now should not occur when you
re-attach the drive.

Finally if you want to know the meaning of the DD and FF values, or how
to disable or enable autoplay for other devices, see the following URL:

http://tinyurl.com/5g75c

That document is for Windows 2000; I could not find a similar document
for XP. However, so far as I have tested (which is just turning off my
firewire drive), these values work for the NoDriveTypeAutoRun values of
the XP registry (although the registry paths are different).

Remember, I have just figured this out on my one machine, and what
worked for me may not work for you! So proceed with caution, but this
definitely did it for me.

Goalstate

']I have a Maxtor 160GB external drive connected to my Tablet docking
station
via firewire.
I have two problems with it.

1. When the Tablet is redocked, AutoPlay is triggered and wants to
scan the
entire disk for every piece of music (my entire CD collection). My
AutoPlay
settings for that drive (D are set to "No Action". There are no
media
files in the root folder. How do I *really* stop this?
2. When the Tablet comes out of standby or hibernation, I get error
messages
to the effect that Windows could not write data to D:\$Msft. 'The
write
caching policy is set to "Optimize for Quick Removal" - the alternate
"Optimize for Performance" makes the problem worse.

There does not appear to be a more recent driver for the device.
Windows is
completely current with public updates and patches. The Tablet edition
is a
superset of Windows XP Pro SP1, so I'm not expecting any
Tablet-specific
issues.