Delayed write failed

[Sazelyt]

The problem is, while transferring files to a brand new internal hard disk (750gb maxtor sata) I am getting this error message (delayed write failed), then either the most beautiful(!) blue screen in the world (with a reference to ntfs.sys), or an explorer.exe crash (cannot even kill the process, cannot shutdown the machine through task manager, so turning off using the power button is the only choice).

When I checked the event log, I saw an error referencing to bad sector.

I don't think it is a usb port related problem. Tried on a different port, same error. Checked whether the enclosure had any problem, however, it did not. I tried the same drive with another enclosure, and it gave the same error. So I am guessing the above message is an accurate one. (I tried those options since the above error messages do happen if the hard disk suddenly disconnects from the system while transferring files to/from it.)

Since this is the first time I am getting this kind of error, I am not experienced enough to have a good opinion. Any idea whether I should keep the disk (do checkdisk, etc.) or just return it if the probability of a failure is high?

Tia.

[Potatochobit]

the hard drive in your computer is dead.

you may be one day too late.

just kidding. what do you mean 'enclosure'? you got the maxtor one in the orange box? or you put an internal drive in an external case. try and format it first. go ahead and break it into two partitions as well.

[Sazelyt]

Thanks for the question. I made a mistake in my reference to the drive. It is not a brand-name external hard disk. It is a maxtor inside a vantec enclosure.

And, it is already partitioned (~400-~300).

[Ledgem]

1) Do you have an ATI graphics card?
If so, it seems that it's potentially causing some of the issues.

2) When you tried putting the drive into a different enclosure, were you using a different USB cable or the same one with both enclosures? It's possible that the cable is faulty.

3) Last probable idea: dead drive.

Delayed write error seems to be a very old issue. If you look on Microsoft's help page or view the Eight Common Causes of Delayed Write Error you'll find that most of them pertain to PATA drives, not SATA. If you have an ATI graphics card there's a chance that it's the problem (but it seems that was 3-4 years ago, so I'd assume it's been fixed since then). Otherwise, gear up to return the drive for a replacement.

[Sazelyt]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

1) Do you have an ATI graphics card?
If so, it seems that it's potentially causing some of the issues.

2) When you tried putting the drive into a different enclosure, were you using a different USB cable or the same one with both enclosures? It's possible that the cable is faulty.

3) Last probable idea: dead drive.

Delayed write error seems to be a very old issue. If you look on Microsoft's help page or view the Eight Common Causes of Delayed Write Error you'll find that most of them pertain to PATA drives, not SATA. If you have an ATI graphics card there's a chance that it's the problem (but it seems that was 3-4 years ago, so I'd assume it's been fixed since then). Otherwise, gear up to return the drive for a replacement.

No ATI graphics card. Not in the laptop I am currently using anyway. And, I tried different cable (actually two different cables, just to make sure).

I am also suspecting the drive to become problematic as time goes by. Just wanted to receive quick opinions. In any case, I have already ordered a seagate 1tb to replace this one. Hopefully, by the time it arrives, I can still collect the data I had already written on it. I have mostly used Maxtors upto 500gb size and didn't have such problem, I guess the newer ones are not that reliable (especially when Seagate is expected to put more efforts on their own brand drive).

[cyberbeing]

Were you cutting (moving) or copying (duplicating) the files? If you were cutting them then it's possible the delayed write failure may be on the drive you were moving the files from. A lot of the time, problems like this may be caused by an incompatibility between the drive and the controller (I wouldn't be surprised that the enclosure is the cause) though a defective or corrupt drive is also a possibility. I had massive delayed write failure problems when I had my two Maxtor MaxlineIII in RAID-0 connected to my onboard Silicon Image Raid controller. Once I moved them to a different controller the problem disappeared.

I would recommend connecting the drive directly to your computer and then downloading the diagnostic tools from Seagate and run those to see if it's detecting a problem. It would also be a good idea to download the tools from whoever makes the drive you were using as the source of the copy and make sure it is fine as well. If you are getting a delayed write failure when running the diagnostics in windows, try booting into dos and using the dos tools.

[Tiberium Wolf]

I had this error before from an external enclosure. The problem is the enclosure interface. It happens more often if you copy tons of small files. My solution was to get the HDD in it defragged and stop making transfers that would take a lot of time or with tons of files. This will make it happen less times. The best was to get a new enclosure like I did.

[Ledgem]

He tried it with two enclosures. It's possible that both enclosures had issues, but that seems to indicate that it's more the drive than the enclosure that was used.

[cyberbeing]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

He tried it with two enclosures. It's possible that both enclosures had issues, but that seems to indicate that it's more the drive than the enclosure that was used.

Well he didn't say he used two different brands/models of enclosures. I just assumed he owned more than one of the same enclosure. If one model/brand of enclosure has an issue, it's likely another of the same model/brand would have the same issue (granted he didn't really specify one way or another).

Looking on newegg I see a couple reviews by Matt Cham by Nigel about having delayed write failures with Vantec products. So I wouldn't really rule out the enclosure quite yet.

Fipskuul, you may also want to try turning off Write Caching on that 750GB drive in device manager and see if it helps.

[Kurz]

Try taking the harddrive to another computer and run check disk on it.
To see if it can fix the disk errors.

[Sazelyt]

Originally Posted by cyberbeing

Were you cutting (moving) or copying (duplicating) the files? If you were cutting them then it's possible the delayed write failure may be on the drive you were moving the files from.

Nope. That is being verified through another means.

I would recommend connecting the drive directly to your computer and then downloading the diagnostic tools from Seagate and run those to see if it's detecting a problem. It would also be a good idea to download the tools from whoever makes the drive you were using as the source of the copy and make sure it is fine as well. If you are getting a delayed write failure when running the diagnostics in windows, try booting into dos and using the dos tools.

I might give it a try for these programs. I can experiment as much as I like until I return the drive. I don't want to risk keeping a possibly faulty drive, especially as big as this one, that would make me feel really sad if I lose all the possible data that I can write on it.

Originally Posted by Tiberium Wolf

I had this error before from an external enclosure. The problem is the enclosure interface. It happens more often if you copy tons of small files. My solution was to get the HDD in it defragged and stop making transfers that would take a lot of time or with tons of files. This will make it happen less times. The best was to get a new enclosure like I did.

Originally Posted by Ledgem

He tried it with two enclosures. It's possible that both enclosures had issues, but that seems to indicate that it's more the drive than the enclosure that was used.

Actually I have three of the same enclosures (one of them was already occupied, so I didn't want to disturb it). I checked with the other two. And, just to make sure, I also used the third one to eliminate the enclosure concern. The model that I am using is a highly reliable Vantec enclosure model, so the likelihood for even one of them to be faulty was very low (having three faulty at the same time would be close to impossible).

[cyberbeing]

Originally Posted by Fipskuul

Actually I have three of the same enclosures (one of them was already occupied, so I didn't want to disturb it). I checked with the other two. And, just to make sure, I also used the third one to eliminate the enclosure concern. The model that I am using is a highly reliable Vantec enclosure model, so the likelihood for even one of them to be faulty was very low (having three faulty at the same time would be close to impossible).

That logic isn't very sound. Considering you have 3 of the same thing, maybe that model of Vantec enclosure just has a firmware incompatibility with the firmware in the Maxtor 750GB drive you bought. In other words if you owned 1,000 of them they all might exhibit the same problem. Now if you had tested it in 3 different brand/model enclosures and had the same problem then that is another story and it would definitely be a drive problem. I still suspect there is a good chance that the problem will be gone once you hook it up directly to the SATA controller in your PC.

[sa547]

The glitch happened when trying to backup a MMOG to the external drive because the game contained some smaller bits of files.

All I did was to archive them to a big, spanned Zip file, before transferring it to the external backup. Looks like it does prefer (CD-sized) big files. Guess this'll be my trick for such situations.

update: Hmmm... after some thought (and my previous posting) it definitely seems that the enclosure's firmware is very picky with file sizes it wants to accept before copying the data to the media it houses.

For backup and emergency contingencies I rigged a older, 40GB Maxtor IDE hard disk within a Chinese-made Matrix CD enclosure with a USB2.0 interface, and after plugging it to one of the workstations I had some ISO CD image files copied first from the computer, and the transfer was ok. The next transfer batch was a full directory of files (some of them having very small sizes) belonging to an online game, which I copied to the enclosure. Well, I caught the error just as the threadstarter had described.

[Sazelyt]

Originally Posted by cyberbeing

That logic isn't very sound. Considering you have 3 of the same thing, maybe that model of Vantec enclosure just has a firmware incompatibility with the firmware in the Maxtor 750GB drive you bought. In other words if you owned 1,000 of them they all might exhibit the same problem. Now if you had tested it in 3 different brand/model enclosures and had the same problem then that is another story and it would definitely be a drive problem. I still suspect there is a good chance that the problem will be gone once you hook it up directly to the SATA controller in your PC.

The one that is sitting in the occupied one is Maxtor's brother of the same size. I am not saying they should give the same performance, but, in terms of compatibility both should perform similarly.

And, this is the first time I am hearing compatibility problems related to the enclosures. I haven't had any before, regardless of the size I used. I don't know if this drive has a specific issue that I should pay attention to. But, I am only going to use this with an enclosure (I only have laptops with me, I don't have the PC with me, and won't for the next few months), so if it cannot succeed in this enclosure, it would not be a good idea to search for the enclosure that the drive will like. I would have tried that if I had the time, but currently I don't. In any case, thanks for the information, it might become useful later on.

[cyberbeing]

Originally Posted by Fipskuul

The one that is sitting in the occupied one is Maxtor's brother of the same size.

So I guess that means the other is an actual Seagate branded drive? When Maxtor was still its own company it had a bit of a bad reputation for it's DiamondMax line of hard drives that was incompatible with some controllers (namely nforce). When Maxtor was bought by Seagate in 2006 it became their economy line and who know knows how much of Maxtor still exists in those drives or what they changed to cut costs. I wouldn't really consider the Maxtor branded drives as comparable to the Seagate branded drives in performance and reliability.

Speaking of which, it looks like the internal DiamondMax 22 line of drives (which I assume you have) may have been discontinued as it seems it's not really sold much of anywhere. Any reason you didn't just buy a 750GB external drive or Seagate branded 750GB internal? It looks like an external can be bought for as cheap as $140 online and an internal for around $110. The only internal Maxtor 750GB I see is selling for $140 which is quite a bit of difference.

Without a desktop it seems like you're kind of stuck. I hope a replacement drive does fix your problem. If it doesn't, it will likely fall back to the Vantec enclosure and the Maxtor 750GB drive not getting along very well. If you bought a retail drive and you're able to return it, you may just want to do that and buy a different drive.