Failure To Write

[Lori]

I am going out of my mind. I have a C drive with two externals labeled F and
G, a floppy which is A and two disc drives, a DVD and a CD/RW drive which are
D and E respectively. Recently, I am constantly getting a yellow pop-up in
the lower right side of my screen telling me that "Windows was unable to save
all the date for file F:\$MFT. 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."
This is accompanied by Event Nos. 51 and 57 in my Admin. Tools Event Viewer.

I am at a loss. Have tried everything from disk defragging to expanding the
MFT on the external and no good. Also am very up-to-date on my AV, spyware,
malware, etc., software and all is good.

Any ideas on what could be causing this? If i have BOTH externals running,
I get the same error message referencing the G drive. I am NOT trying to
write ANYTHING at all when this occurs.

Thanks.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Lori,
The file $MFT is the Master File Table of the NTFS volume of F: and
is roughly the equivalent of the FAT table in Fat and Fat32 volumes. All
drives formatted as NTFS will have this hidden file in the root, as all NTFS
volumes have an MFT. One option would be, as this is obviously not going to
be your system drive, that you save all the data on this drive somewhere
else and then re-format F: to Fat32. It does not explain why this is
happening, it could possibly be a connection problem. Try making sure that
all the USB cables (if it is a USB connected drive) or network cables (if it
NAS storage) are plugged in properly first.


==


Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[Lori]

Tim,
Thanks for the reply. I did check the cables and they are all fine. Odd
that it would be happening to two separate externals, though, don't you
think? Makes me feel it is something associated not with the external(s),
but the main hard drive. I don't know where to go from here except to
totally reformat the C drive and see if I can't save the computer, although
that is so much work being I don't have all the discs anymore for all the
programs on the drive. I will lose a lot that way. All my data is backed
up, but the programs themselves are not. I just wish there was an obvious
answer to this.

Thanks for your help.

 

[LVTravel]

Tim,
Thanks for the reply. I did check the cables and they are all fine. Odd
that it would be happening to two separate externals, though, don't you
think? Makes me feel it is something associated not with the external(s),
but the main hard drive. I don't know where to go from here except to
totally reformat the C drive and see if I can't save the computer,
although
that is so much work being I don't have all the discs anymore for all the
programs on the drive. I will lose a lot that way. All my data is backed
up, but the programs themselves are not. I just wish there was an obvious
answer to this.

Thanks for your help.

Are these USB drives self powered (have a separate power supply plugged into
shore power) or USB powered?

 

[Lori]

Separate plugs for each.

I just read a lot and found out about editing the registry, setting the
prefetch enumerator (I THINK it was called) to a different value. Just tried
that and am waiting for the error to pop up again. So far, it's quiet but I
won't hold my breath. I have to think it can't be BOTH of my externals.
Wouldn't make sense. I usually keep the G drive off and today decided to
plug it in and, voila, it got the same error message on it. So it has to be
coming from the hard drive and not the externals, or at least in my way of
thinking.

Thanks for any input you may have on this subject.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Lori,
I agree with you, it's got to be a faulty Windows setting that's
doing this, causing some conflict. Keep trying, as usually, someone will
have the answer. Keeping my fingers very much crossed for you. (I will
also do some research on this error message and get back to you here)

==


Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[Lori]

Tim,
I replied before from my iPhone, but I don't think it went through. If it
did and there are two similar posts, that's why.

So far I've been lucky and haven't seen a pop-up error message since I
edited the registry this morning. I am keeping the faith and do believe in
positive thinking.

I appreciate your input and your optimism. Thank you very much. Will keep
you posted.

 

[Tim Meddick]

All fingers crossed!


==


Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[Lori]

THANKS!

All fingers crossed!


==


Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.