New external hard disk randomly gives Ftdisk 57 errors

[John Gray]

I recently bought a snappily-titled 2 TB "Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk" external hard disk, and connected it via the supplied USB mini A plug cable (1.8 m) and a USB extension cable (2 m) into the back of my PC.

Every so often, at entirely random times, Windows XP Pro causes my speakers to give the bing-bong disconnect sound, followed about 5-10 seconds later by the bong-bing reconnect sound. The System Event Log has the Ftdisk Event ID 57 entry "The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur."

Thinking it might be a USB cable connection problem, I purchased a single 3m USB mini-A plug to USB A plug cable, but this hasn't improved matters.

I've done some Googling but without any obvious solution. I didn't install any of the accompanying Seagate software, not really wanting a dashboard meter which tells me how full the disk is, in the expectation that Windows would handle the hard disk just like it has done for my other, smaller, one for the last few years.

Any suggestions, please?

[John Gray]

I think I've got a bit further with this problem, which seems to be related to the Seagate drive's apparent habit of powering itself down/disconnecting after (the default) 15 minutes of inactivity. I suppose 'something' decides that it should be wakened again, quite rapidly.

I've never had a problem like this on my ancient (Firewire 400-connected) Maxtor OneTouch II external hard drive, which also powers itself down and stays down until such time as data is wanted from it, or it needs to be written to.

Would Firewire and USB connections be that different in operation, or should I suspect a peculiarity with the Seagate drive?

[JoeP]

I've seen other complaints of hard drives spinning down and causing weird problems. It is very difficult to change the spin down time on newer drives. I guess the first thing I'd check would be to see if there is a firmware update for the drive.

Have you checked the Seagate support site/forums?

Joe

[John Gray]

Thanks, Joe - I've set the drive never to spin down, and put an as-yet-unanswered question on the Seagate Community Forums... I'll see if the problem recurs.