Is it a hard disk problem or something else?

Question

I recently purchased a Seagate 160Gb SATA Hard disk. I'll be using it as my 2nd back-up drive to my 40Gb IDE hard disk. So I made a partition and format it (quick format) thru disk management. I thought all was doing good after i formatted it and the drives were seen at My Computer but when I tried to copy/paste files from my old 40 Gb disk to my new disk, it generated an error which is "delayed write failed" which was seen at the task bar. After that, the file was no longer copied and the disk disappeared from My Computer. The same thing happened when I installed programs/application in it. I try to reboot my PC and hope it will solve the issue but when it resumed at the desktop, the error "delayed write failed" still appeared at the task bar. My question is, is my new hard disk faulty or other hardwares from my CPU (motherboard, RAM) has the problem? Where will I start troubleshooting? Please help.. Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Test it with another computer. If it still doesnt work. It's faulty.

Answer 2

Some common reasons for a delayed-write failure are:



* 1. Problems with a device driver, especially a SCSI or RAID device driver. Some RAID device drivers are known to issue spurious "Delayed Write Failed" errors in XP Service Pack 2. Most manufacturers have been alerted to this, so check to make sure the disk drivers are up-to-date.



* 2. Cabling problems. A faulty or broken cable -- especially for an external USB or Firewire enclosure—can generate this error. It can also happen if the cable is too long, or if it is hooked up through a hub that isn't up to spec. Another possible culprit is if you have a UDMA drive that requires an 80-pin cable, and you are using a 40-pin cable.



* 3. SCSI termination errors. This has become less likely with the advent of self-terminating SCSI hardware, but it shouldn't be counted out.



* 4. Media errors. This is the worst possible scenario -- essentially, drive failure. If you can garner statistics on the drive via SMART (such as SMART & Simple (http://www.beyondlogic.org/solutions/smart/smart.html), you may be able to determine if there's a mechanical failure in the offing. Gibson Research's SpinRite tool (http://grc.com/) is also useful for assessing media errors, but be warned: It may take a long time to do a thorough test.



* 5. BIOS settings on the computer are forcing faster UDMA modes than the drive controller can handle. This is unlikely, especially with newer hardware (which can support UDMA far more flexibly), but it can usually be fixed with a BIOS upgrade, or by resetting the BIOS entries for the hard drives to auto-detect settings. Devices set to UDMA Mode 6 that produce this error, for instance, might need to be set to Mode 5.



* 6. Controller issues. I've observed that USB controllers that contend strongly with other hardware can produce this error. In systems that have both "long" and "short" PCI slots (i.e., 64-bit and 32-bit), try moving the USB controller to the long slot. Older PCI cards will not fit in such a slot.



* 7. Memory parity issues. If the problem appears after installing new memory, the memory in question may be faulty or not of the correct type for the motherboard in question. (This may go hand-in-hand with other problems such as random lockups, too.)



* 8. The LargeSystemCache Registry tweak and ATI video adapters. One peculiar set of circumstances that has been observed on multiple machines with ATI video adapters and more than 512MB of memory involves the LargeSystemCache Registry setting, a DWORD entry found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management. This setting governs the amount of memory set aside by the system for certain kernel processes. If it's set to 1 (which allegedly improves performance on systems with more than 512MB of memory), it can cause data corruption on some systems, and produce the "Delayed Write Failed" error. Try resetting it to 0 if it's been set.

Answer 3

The problem itself seems to be from a memory cache on the USB adapter which drives my disk. It seems that when accessing big files, the cache gets corrupted and the drive becomes inaccessible. To rectify that, a filter driver should be installed, which will limit the packets size sent to the USB adapter bus.



There’s a filter named “MAX128K Filter”, just go ahead and install that. The author’s website explains it very clearly and easy to understand. But one thing to be careful is that he explains it how to apply the filter to your Firewire device, but me, I applied it to my USB external drive.



Note that for USB external hard drives, you should look in



“My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR”



instead of SBP2, to find your actual external drive.



Go ahead and read what says the author, and read carefuly the Instructions and then download and proceed.



here’s the link : Home of Max128k Filter Driver (http://memweb.newsguy.com/~siccos/)



Once everything’s done properly, just restart your system and see if you get that error again. Well, you can try copying some files to the drive, and keep using the drive for some time to see if everything’s OK or not.

Answer 4

If your motherboard supports also SATA drive, guess the problem can be resolved by following the step by step solution prescribed by MS





http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330174