WD 250 GB USB2/Firewire external hard drives

[Lynn McGuire]

I am having trouble with one of my external WD 250 GB external hard
drives. I am getting this loud clicking noise when my backup writes
to it. Windows XP SP2 keeps on giving an error message for writing
the H:\$MFT file which does not sound good to me at all. I have the
drive hooked thru my firewire port.

I use these drives to write a copy of all the drives on my LAN. I
do this once a week, usually takes about 24 hours for 150 GB.

I am running HD Tune Error Scan on it right now. 10% done and all
is OK.

Thanks,
Lynn

 

[Odie Ferrous]

I am having trouble with one of my external WD 250 GB external hard
drives. I am getting this loud clicking noise when my backup writes
to it. Windows XP SP2 keeps on giving an error message for writing
the H:\$MFT file which does not sound good to me at all. I have the
drive hooked thru my firewire port.

I use these drives to write a copy of all the drives on my LAN. I
do this once a week, usually takes about 24 hours for 150 GB.

I am running HD Tune Error Scan on it right now. 10% done and all
is OK.

Thanks,
Lynn

You need to replace the drive - yesterday.

Generally a drive that "clicks" is a drive that has already failed.

Yours is almost certainly about to do so. (If it is the actual drive
itself that is clicking.)


Odie

 

[Scott]

error message for writing
the H:\$MFT file which does not sound good to me at all. I have the
drive hooked thru my firewire port.

There is also a problem if you have Windows XP SP2 with external
Firewire hard drives. I have gone through this lately. Do a search
on "1394 delayed write failure" to see if any of this applies to your
problem. Firewire drives and other peripherals that worked fine in
SP1 were 'broken' by SP2 - when Microsoft narrowed the compliance to
the 1394 spec.

Scott

 

[Lynn]

the H:\$MFT file which does not sound good to me at all. I have the

There is also a problem if you have Windows XP SP2 with external
Firewire hard drives. I have gone through this lately. Do a search
on "1394 delayed write failure" to see if any of this applies to your
problem. Firewire drives and other peripherals that worked fine in
SP1 were 'broken' by SP2 - when Microsoft narrowed the compliance to
the 1394 spec.

Oh wow ! This is the "delayed write failure" problem that I have been
having on both USB2 and Firewire:
FIrewire: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885464 and
http://www.bustrace.com/delayedwrite/
USB2: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908673/en-us and
http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=16&threadid=50469 and
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/13302/

Replacement Firewire card may solve the problem:
http://www.jeffzimmerlin.com/Pages/FeatureArticle.php?Number=21

Dont know about the fixes for USB2.

Lynn

 

[Scott]

Oh wow ! This is the "delayed write failure" problem that I have been
having on both USB2 and Firewire:

The only thing that seems to have solved my 'delayed write failure' on
Firewire was the posted suggestion to change PCI Latency in BIOS to 8
- from the value of 32 that was my systems default.

The reasoning behind this was, according to one poster "he PCI Latency
value defines how many clock cycles a device may hog the bus for - it
may seem that a higher value would improve performance, but we need to
ensure other PCI devices do not take control of the bus for too long,
causing a delayed write failure."

None of the other suggested fixes worked for me.

Keep us updated on your success or lack thereof.

Scott

 

[Boss Hog]

There is also a problem if you have Windows XP SP2 with external
Firewire hard drives. I have gone through this lately. Do a search
on "1394 delayed write failure" to see if any of this applies to your
problem. Firewire drives and other peripherals that worked fine in
SP1 were 'broken' by SP2 - when Microsoft narrowed the compliance to
the 1394 spec.

Do NAS devices suffer the same problems?

I'm thinking of getting a Buffalo Linkstation which will plug directly
into my router.

I have a Buffalo external USB2.0 drive (Drivestaion) which experiences
no issues whatsoever when plugged directly into my laptop, but plug it
into a Linksys NSLU2, and I get the delayed write failure every time.

Needless to say, I have 1 very redundant NSLU2 sitting idle.