External HDD on USB 2 errors....

M

Max Burke

Just installed an 120Gb external HDD through a USB 2 card in a PCI slot.

I can do backups to the drive either by dragging, copying, and with XP's
NTBackup program. Running Chkdsk shows no file system errors or formatting
errors.
Disk management shows the 3 partitions set up on the drive are healthy.

IOW It's all running OK with no conflicts with the MBO USB 1.1 ports except
for the following error messages in the system folder of the event viewer
when shutting down XP.

Error messages.
============
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Ftdisk
Event Category: Disk
Event ID: 57
Date: 5/08/2004
Time: 8:21:29 p.m.
User: N/A
Computer: CRAY1000
Description:
The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may
occur.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

[And:]

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 51
Date: 5/08/2004
Time: 8:21:29 p.m.
User: N/A
Computer: CRAY1000
Description:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\D during a paging
operation.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

[and occasionally]

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Ntfs
Event Category: None
Event ID: 50
Date: 4/08/2004
Time: 11:56:15 p.m.
User: N/A
Computer: CRAY1000
Description:
{Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file
.. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your
computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file
elsewhere.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
===============

From the links in these error messages it could possibly be a timing
problem. (XP cant write a file to the drive in time, or is writing it too
fast)

I currently have system restore monitoring the drive/partitions, could this
be the file(s) that XP is trying to write to the drive on shutdown?

Is it a good Idea to have system restore monitoring an external drive?

Hardware details.
The HD is a Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 120Gb drive with an 8Mb cache
installed in an ICT USB 2 external drive case..
The USB 2 card is an NEC 4 port USB 2/PCI card.

XP starts up and shuts down OK, with no delays...
I'm running XPH with SP1, and current with all updates.
 
N

Nathan McNulty

XP does not play well with external NTFS disks. What is happening is XP
is failing to flush the I/O buffer before the disk is disconnected or
the computer is turned off. I would recommend turning off System
Restore on that disk first of all. Second, you never mentioned when this
is happening. Is this only when you remove the drive from the computer?
Finally, it could, but most likely isn't, be related to the external
case. I would check everything else before I blame that though.

----
Nathan McNulty


Max said:
Just installed an 120Gb external HDD through a USB 2 card in a PCI slot.

I can do backups to the drive either by dragging, copying, and with XP's
NTBackup program. Running Chkdsk shows no file system errors or formatting
errors.
Disk management shows the 3 partitions set up on the drive are healthy.

IOW It's all running OK with no conflicts with the MBO USB 1.1 ports except
for the following error messages in the system folder of the event viewer
when shutting down XP.

Error messages.
============
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Ftdisk
Event Category: Disk
Event ID: 57
Date: 5/08/2004
Time: 8:21:29 p.m.
User: N/A
Computer: CRAY1000
Description:
The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may
occur.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

[And:]

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 51
Date: 5/08/2004
Time: 8:21:29 p.m.
User: N/A
Computer: CRAY1000
Description:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\D during a paging
operation.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

[and occasionally]

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Ntfs
Event Category: None
Event ID: 50
Date: 4/08/2004
Time: 11:56:15 p.m.
User: N/A
Computer: CRAY1000
Description:
{Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file
. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your
computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file
elsewhere.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
===============

From the links in these error messages it could possibly be a timing
problem. (XP cant write a file to the drive in time, or is writing it too
fast)

I currently have system restore monitoring the drive/partitions, could this
be the file(s) that XP is trying to write to the drive on shutdown?

Is it a good Idea to have system restore monitoring an external drive?

Hardware details.
The HD is a Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 120Gb drive with an 8Mb cache
installed in an ICT USB 2 external drive case..
The USB 2 card is an NEC 4 port USB 2/PCI card.

XP starts up and shuts down OK, with no delays...
I'm running XPH with SP1, and current with all updates.
 
M

Max Burke

Nathan McNulty scribbled:
XP does not play well with external NTFS disks. What is happening is
XP is failing to flush the I/O buffer before the disk is disconnected
or the computer is turned off. I would recommend turning off System
Restore on that disk first of all. Second, you never mentioned when
this is happening. Is this only when you remove the drive from the
computer? Finally, it could, but most likely isn't, be related to
the external case. I would check everything else before I blame that
though.

It happens when I shut down or restart the computer only.

It never happens while it's starting up or running.

With further experimenting by using the 'safely remove hardware' icon that
appears in taskbar and removing the drive before shutting down XP I can
eliminate the messages.
It would seem that XP doesn't get to finish writting to the disk before it
try's to shut it down.

Running or not running system restore on the drive has no effect on the
messages.

Looks like I'll need to install a third party shutdown manager to automate
the shutdown of the drive before shutting down the computer...

Thanks for your quick reply Nathan.
 

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