As more and more people are using external USB hard drives, this is becoming a more common problem. I personally use a Western Digital Passport 320 GB USB drive for all of my important files. I do keep a backup of all of them on the hard drive of my desktop computer as well.
I keep have unpredictable problems with data corruption when I modify, create and save files at work. We have no dedicated computers on the job so I cannot save a copy to the hard disk there. When a file doesn’t save or is corrupted, I lose the work permanently. Sometimes you will get the following error message.
But, at other times, you don’t know that there is a problem until you try to open the file on another machine.
Common Causes for Delayed Write Errors
There are several common causes for receiving a delayed write error:
Device Drivers – many hard disk drivers for Windows XP with service pack 2 are known to cause this problem. Make sure that you update to the latest drivers. If you are using a public computer or one at your job, ask your IT department to please update the machine or machines you normally use to the latest drivers.
Cabling – a bad USB cable can cause this problem especially if it is intermittent. Try using a new cable if possible to see if the error reoccurs.
Disk problems – it is possible that the disk does have bad sectors. There are several utilities that can check the drive and mark bad blocks so the operating system doesn’t try to use them again. If you think that might be the problem, your local computer store can suggest what tools to buy or run the programs for you for a small fee.
BIOS settings – sometimes the BIOS settings on the computer are set to mode 6 for UDMA. Many of the portable USB hard drives need to have these setting set to mode 5 or you can get a BIOS upgrade that will auto detect the USB drive controller capability.
Disk caching – Sometimes writing to the cache before data is written to the USB hard drive can cause corruption. Turn off disk caching for the USB hard drive by doing the following things:
- Select Start then right-click on My Computer
- Next, left-click on Properties
- Click on the Hardware tab at the top
- Click on the Device Manager button
- Click on the + next to Disk Drives to expand it
- Right click on the hard drive where you want to turn write caching off, then left click Properties Click on the Policies tab. Click on Optimize for quick removal as shown below
Hopefully, this will fix your problem if something is failing to write either to ro from the disk cache. Good luck.
Related Searches
- usb corruption (24)
- usb data corruption (17)
- usb drive data corruption (7)
- usb hard drive data corruption (6)
- usb hard drive corruption (5)
- windows 7 usb corrupt (4)
- usb causes corruption (4)
- USB data corruption windows 7 (4)
- usb drive corruption (4)
- windows 7 usb corruption (3)
- data corruption usb (3)
- files corrupt after copy to usb hard disk (3)
- usb disk corruption problem (2)
- corrupt files on usb hard drive (2)
- Windows XP has problem writing to USB (2)
- windows 7 usb disk cache (2)
- windows 7 usb data corruption (2)
- net use delayed write error (2)
- usb disk cache (2)
- usb drive reasons for data corruption (2)
Comments on this entry are closed.