File corruption on Firewire drives

[Loren Jones]

Has anyone experienced file corruption using Firewire or
USB 2.0 drives? I backup large collections of digital
images to my Firewire drives and have recently found
random file corruption in a number of the JPGs. Doing an
FC between a good set and a copy sitting on the Firewire
drive confirms the corruption.

These are IDE drives in external cases using the, I
believe, Oxford chipset for Firewire/USB2=>IDE.

TIA.

 

[Bob Harris]

Try copying using the COPY or XCOPY commands in a command prompt instead of
using windows explorer with drag and drop. Both these commands support a /V
option, which verifies that the copy matches the original. Of course, using
/V slows down the copy process, but not all that much.

As for why you have this problem, I can only speculate along these lines:

1. Poor connection, using wrong cable or too long a cable.
2. Insuffiicent CPU power, doing do mnay other things while copying.
3. Failure to use the remove hardware safely systray icon
4. corrupt file sustem; have you done a CHKDSK with /F option lately on
either drive? How about your internal drive?
5. Bad spot on the disk, internal or external; have you done a CHKDSK with
/R option, ever or recently?
6. Weak power supply relative to PC plus PC-powered peripherals.

 

[Nicholas]

Loren,

I am having the same problem with an external enclosure
powered by an Oxford chipset via USB 2.0. Have not been
able to determine if it's the chipset at fault or Windows
itself. :-/

-Nicholas