Odd error generated by external USB drives (Warning 51)

[Carol Haynes]

I have two external USB drives. Both are Seagate drives and both are
regularly generating warnings in my System Event Log similar to:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 51
Date: 19/03/2008
Time: 08:40:13
User: N/A
Computer: LAIRDSWOOD
Description:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk7\D during a paging
operation.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 04 00 68 00 01 00 b6 00 ..h...¶.
0008: 00 00 00 00 33 00 04 80 ....3..€
0010: 2d 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 -.......
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 6e bd 3a 3a 00 00 00 .n½::...
0028: d1 9b 1f 00 00 00 00 00 Ñ›......
0030: ff ff ff ff 03 00 00 00 ÿÿÿÿ....
0038: 40 00 00 84 02 00 00 00 @..„....
0040: 00 20 0a 12 80 01 20 40 . ..€. @
0048: 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 ........
0050: 00 f0 fc 87 48 7d 70 88 .ðü‡H}pˆ
0058: 00 00 00 00 e0 6d 1f 88 ....àm.ˆ
0060: 00 00 00 00 b7 5e 1d 1d ....·^..
0068: 2a 00 1d 1d 5e b7 00 00 *...^·..
0070: 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0078: 70 00 02 00 00 00 00 0a p.......
0080: 00 00 00 00 04 02 00 00 ........
0088: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

The strange thing is that this event (and two similar ones) were generated
overnight while the drive was not used at all. It was plugged in and
switched on and there was an Explorer window open on the root folder but the
disc was not being used for any reading or writing at all.

Neither drive have a windows page file - so it must be ordinaryaccess to the
drives causing the warnings to pop up.

I have looked at the MSKB article relating to this warning and have even
taken the time to decode the error blocks (establishing that both drives
generate the warning for read and write actions a number of times a day, the
situation is resolved with a retry - only one retry seems to be required).

The block above (first byte Ox04) is about writing to the disk - why would
Windows be writing to a disk when none of the files on the disk were in
use - and certainly not for writing?

Could this be to do with the drives automatically going in to powersaving
mode and taking a while to wake up when a request is sent?

Any suggestions gratefully recieved as these warnings are really irritating.

Thanks

Carol Haynes

 

[DL]

Are these errors generated during normal usage, or only overnight?

 

[Carol Haynes]

They seem to happen randomly all the time. They aren't frequent but I'd
guess today there have been about 12 or so 'warnings'.

The significance of night time was that the system was idle apart from a
brief period of downloading to another drive. The external drives have only
data on them and there were no applications running which access any data on
those drives so they should be sitting there quietly doing nothing! They
don't seem to generate more warnings when they are in heavy use. Its all
very odd.

I contacted Seagate about this and they suggested I reintsall the USB
drivers which I have done but it made no difference.

 

[Carol Haynes]

They seem to happen randomly all the time. They aren't frequent but I'd

guess today there have been about 12 or so 'warnings'.

Sorry missed a word out of that sentence - it should have said today on the
end!

 

[Lil' Dave]

Just curious...

Is system restore enabled for both those external drives, if so, why?

Why do you leave the external drives powered up when not using them?

 

[Carol Haynes]

Just curious...

Is system restore enabled for both those external drives, if so, why?

No - I haven't got System restore enabled on any drives (I use regular
incremental image backups of the main system drive instead)

Why do you leave the external drives powered up when not using them?

Because my desk is very cluttered and the drives are awkwardly hidden behind
my monitor. Also the PSUs for the drives are buried under a pile of cables
behind my desk where they are difficult to get at and one of the drives
doesn't even have an off button!

Actually I usually turn off my system at night, and the drives go to sleep
when they are not being accessed during the day.

 

[Lil' Dave]

No - I haven't got System restore enabled on any drives (I use regular
incremental image backups of the main system drive instead)


Because my desk is very cluttered and the drives are awkwardly hidden
behind my monitor. Also the PSUs for the drives are buried under a pile of
cables behind my desk where they are difficult to get at and one of the
drives doesn't even have an off button!

Actually I usually turn off my system at night, and the drives go to sleep
when they are not being accessed during the day.

Just food for thought. Consider an under-monitor switch box for your AC
powered stuff other than computer and monitor. Am assuming you already have
an UPS for the latter. In a nutshell, its a box with LED and switch for
each component you normally plug into the wall. Has an AC outlet on the
back of it for each component. Allows you to turn on and off each
individual item from the unit. I utilize this for my printer, a scanner,
and 2 external hard drives.

 

[Carol Haynes]

Sounds like a good idea (yes I have got a UPS).

Just food for thought. Consider an under-monitor switch box for your AC
powered stuff other than computer and monitor. Am assuming you already
have an UPS for the latter. In a nutshell, its a box with LED and switch
for each component you normally plug into the wall. Has an AC outlet on
the back of it for each component. Allows you to turn on and off each
individual item from the unit. I utilize this for my printer, a scanner,
and 2 external hard drives.