Failed USB External Drive

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Bigaldoc
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Failed USB External Drive

Post by Bigaldoc »

Boy, sometimes it's scary trying to diagnose a computer problem! I post this only on the chance it may cause someone to be wary or alert to possible "hidden" hardware problems!

I've spent since yesterday afternoon, a good part of the night and continuing into this morning trying to find out what was preventing my computer from re-booting. I was working merrily along yesterday and after doing a bunch of pix editing with PSP and watching a streaming video of a college basketball game I decided to restart the computer. I have XP, Vista and Win7 and normally boot to XP. The boot got to the XP screen that says "Windows is Starting" and would go no further. I left it for 30 minutes at a time to be sure.

I was able finally to start Win7 and did a CHKDSK on the XP drive without any problems or errors. I could even look at the drive in Windows Explorer and didn't "see" anything that looked strange. I went through this over and over, finally leaving it at that "Windows is Starting" screen and went to bed. I got up for a bathroom call at 1 am and checked to see the screen was still sitting there and even the basic screensaver was on the screen. So, I powered down to see if I have a HEAT problem and went back to bed.

First thing this morning - repeat the try with the same hangup. So, I decided to restore the previous day's backup, just in case it was a driver(s) problem somewhere. The Shadow Protect CD took a long, long time to get to its menu window for the restore selection process! I noticed that one of my two 500 gig Seagate external drives wasn't showing and when I looked down to where I keep them, it's light was "throbbing" as it does with activity. Again I waited and waited with SP just sitting there, evidently trying to read from that drive.

On a lark I cancelled SP, powered down and disconnected that throbbing drive and voila, here I am. All these hours of "analysis" only to accidently find the culprit - an apparently bad USB drive! Sheesh... Well, I think I do remember seeing a few things from some people who've had trouble with this model Seagate. I'm off to find a couple of replacements...

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DaveA
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

Post by DaveA »

Yes, you right. :evilgrin:
We have a couple Seagate drives here, that will block the booting of the machine if they are turned on. I have not found any solution, only the work around, of powering them off. Otherwise they work great. :evilgrin: :hairout:
I am so far behind, I think I am First :evilgrin:
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Bigaldoc
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Now that you remind me Dave, I remember you saying that in a post somewhere - don't remember if it was here or over at WS.

Hmmm, perhaps that drive isn't "dead" after all, huh? Mebbe I should fire it up now that I've got the machine running again to see.

I wonder why the other one hasn't caused that problem yet? Ahhh, the mysteries of computing. I think that whenever a boot is necessary I'll shut them both down. Ya know, I HAVE been noticing some "slowness" in performance but I just attributed it to the usual accumulation of "stuff" on both internal drives. Possibly it HAS been the two USB drives.

Thanks for the tip!

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BobArch2
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Bigaldoc wrote: Hmmm, perhaps that drive isn't "dead" after all, huh? Mebbe I should fire it up now that I've got the machine running again to see.
Hi Al,

Albeit you have had those USB drives in action for awhile and just now are experiencing the boot-up issue, you are not alone.

I have two externals... a WD500GB and a LaCie 1TB. The system refuses to start if the WD is powered up BEFORE I turn on the computer. I can see where it hangs on the POST waiting to identify the USB drive. Likewise with the LaCie. I've just got into the habit of turning off the external drives before shutting down and then turning them back on after the computer system has completed its startup processes. My motherboard is circa 2005 with the most current BIOS dated 2006. I'm suspecting the m/b but not enough to replace and rebuild. :grin:

If memory serves right... that issue is not there when I boot-up with the SP CD. But going back in history, the issue was there when I was using Acronis TI.

Are you running the most current version of SP... 3.5.1 build 4183?
Regards,
Bob

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Bigaldoc
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Yes sir, my SP boot CD is at the 3.5.1 level. What concerns me is that I don't mind powering down the two USB drives when I routinely boot, as in Dave's case. BUT, and this is a big but, when I have to boot the system with the SP CD, obviously I must have the USB drives plugged in and turned on for SP to find my backup files. This one FAILED and SP could never find it and that's a show stopper because in this case, that's where my current week's backup files are located!

Luckily in this case, I didn't need the backup files on that failed drive since the system booted OK once I turned it off. But, a backup strategy counting on USB externals MUST have them powered on when you boot the CD. So, in conclusion, I'm hoping it's a one-off problem with Seagate.

I now have two of these ( Cavalry CAUE Series Hard Drive - CAUE37500 - Buy.com ) on order and will have to see what happens if I keep them both powered on during a CD boot. It's a tricky situation fer sure!

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BobArch2
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Bigaldoc wrote:...What concerns me is that I don't mind powering down....
Have an update...

My comment stating that "neither of the external hard drives are being recognized on boot-up if they were powered on before the boot-up" has to be updated.

The comment was based on my pre-Windows 7 install and updating to a beta version of the ASUS BIOS (dated late 2006) at the beginning of this year. Because of my experience with externals not being recognized, I have been continuing the practice of waiting until the system has completed the boot-up before turning the power on.

Thankfully being retired and with my wrist still attached to an "external-fixator", there were no household tasks on the to-do list and so, I've spent the last few hours testing all sorts of combinations.

1. I was able to ascertain that one of the externals, the WD 500GB unit could be powered on before a cold boot and be recognized in the POST sequence. The unit was available immediately in either the Windows 7 environment or when booted directly via the SP recovery CD. My thinking is that the beta version of the 2006 ASUS BIOS was responsible for the success factor... since the unit is/was initiated during POST.

2. No amount of tweaking could get the LaCie 1TB (Hitachi HD) recognized during the POST. The System kept hanging in the POST segment:
Pic0.gif
3. The next test was turning off both externals and booting with the SP recovery CD. After selecting the "Win 7" recovery mode, the system displayed all the internal drives. I then turned on the LaCie 1TB unit and within a few seconds, the drive was available in the drive map. Similarly, when I powered on the WD 500GB unit, it was also automatically added.
Pic1.gif
Pic2.gif
4. I then tried another boot using the SP CD with the LaCie 1TB powered on. No go. The BIOS could not recognize the unit.

5. Tried another boot using the SP CD with the LaCie 1TB powered off and the WD 500GB powered on. It worked fine. I then powered on the LaCie 1TB and within seconds, the unit was available.

So, my advice would be to give it another whirl... perhaps following a similar approach as shown above. If it doesn't auto recognize when the external is powered on, try clicking on the refresh link.

Over to you...
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Regards,
Bob

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Bigaldoc
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Thank you for that "enlightenment" Bob. I had no idea that turning ON a drive AFTER booting with the CD would make it visible. I'll give it a try tomorrow. Right now, I must admit to being a tad pooped after my very early arising this morning. I think I'm gonna go have a lie down now...

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DaveA
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Bigaldoc wrote:Thank you for that "enlightenment" Bob. I had no idea that turning ON a drive AFTER booting with the CD would make it visible. I'll give it a try tomorrow. Right now, I must admit to being a tad pooped after my very early arising this morning. I think I'm gonna go have a lie down now...
And now that it is Sunday, you get to rise up a hour earlier than normal :evilgrin: :laugh: :rofl:

Ya, daylight saving time kicked in :grin: :groan: :hairout:
I am so far behind, I think I am First :evilgrin:
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Bigaldoc
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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BobArch2 wrote:So, my advice would be to give it another whirl... perhaps following a similar approach as shown above. If it doesn't auto recognize when the external is powered on, try clicking on the refresh link.
A followup, Bob. This afternoon I finally got time to experiment. I powered down the machine and disconnected both USB drives (the suspect one was already disconnected).

I booted with the SP Recovery CD and after giving the drive map a few seconds to settle in, I reconnected the cables of the two USB drives. SP immediately recognized the one that is still running and containing my full backup from yesterday and one overnight incremental.

The suspect drive did NOT get recognized, so I think it REALLY IS a dead duck and I'm not gonna mess with it any further since it contains nothing useful other than backups.

If you hadn't enlightened me, I never would have imagined a USB device would be recognized AFTER booting from a CD or DVD, so I'm thankful to you for that education.

I'm not gonna take any chances with the remaining Seagate, so I have two Cavalier brand drives scheduled for delivery by mid-week upcoming. I'll keep the remaining Seagate in service just for the heck of it, in case it too dies.

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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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My saga continues. I received my two Cavalier drives mid-week last and installed ONE of them, along with the remaining Seagate (which contains last week's daily backups). The Cavalier looks OK, is already NTFS and I copied a BUNCH of files to it, did a test Shadow Protect backup to it of my Vista partition. That too worked OK, so I planned to use it for this week's backups.

On Saturday, as usual, I did my weekly "housekeeping" (chkdsk, disk cleanup, Fx cache empty, etc.) which of course requires a boot to do the C: chkdsk. I then attempted to setup my weekly backup job to the new Cavalier and it failed, with the following message:

        Windows - Delayed Write Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file (some filename). (I say that because in repeated attempts, the filename is different, confirmed in Event Viewer.)

Uh oh, sez I, looks like my bad luck is continuing and I got a defective drive. Took it out of service and took steps to get an RMA to return it. I reset this week's backup to the older Seagate and went about my business. That backup late Saturday worked OK. I put the second Cavalier in service and tested it as I did with the first - all OK. So, I planned to change the backup job destination from the Seagate to the new (2nd) Cavalier drive. During all of this we had a rare power outage yesterday morning (Sunday) lasting only for a minute or so. After the computer rebooted, and later in the morning I happened to be in Windows Explorer and saw both USB drives present. I changed the backup job to the Cavalier, without "complaints" from Windows.

This morning I find that the backup has FAILED with the above message window popping up every couple of minutes in the system tray! I don't know if the power failure reboot caused it or not (Dave's example). I disconnected the drive and waited about ten minutes before re-connecting it. Windows recognized it within seconds, and I've again copied a BIG bunch of files to it as a test. Once again, I'm going to change my backup to this new Cavalier and see what happens.

Meanwhile I went Googling on that popup error message and found LOTS of hits. It seems that it could be a USB driver problem, a registry hack (see the following link) or a possible network card "speed" setting. This thread is a couple years old, but the latest post was made very recently, so I'm trying the network card setting first:

        [Solved] Windows Delayed Write Failed - Windows-XP-General-Discussion - Windows-XP

Sorry for the long-winded post but this USB externals thing is a puzzle to me...

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StuartR
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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"Delayed write failed" is a nasty little error message. It means that a write to the disk had completed some time ago, and the application had been told that the write succeeded, but that when the device driver tried to flush the file system cache back to the disk drive it had a write error. It cannot now return a fail status to an I/O which it has already said succeeded.

In my experience this is almost always caused by a faulty disk drive.
StuartR


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Bigaldoc
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Well it looks (so far) that you may be right, Stuart. After disconnecting, waiting, reconnecting and copying a BIG bunch of files to it, I figured it might be "Dave's problem" of a reboot causing a problem.

I started another test backup with Shadow Protect an hour ago and it was about 2/3 finished when the dreaded popups started again. SP says the backup failed. So, I will try the other two things in that thread, although I don't know where on the MS site to check and see if I have the latest USB drivers. There is a link in that thread to a KB article but it doesn't work.

Otherwise, I guess I'm glum on Cavalier as well and will be going for yet another RMA!!!

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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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No one seems to have any recommendations about this external USB drive thing. My two Seagates are (were) 18 months old and now after TWO failed Cavalry drives, I'm surprised that no one has any "success" stories to post. I'm beginning to think the whole USB external thing may be problematic and maybe there isn't a good, reliable drive solution.

In another place during my Googles, I found a recommendation to turn off write caching so I tried that but a SP backup test still fails. It's hard to believe that TWO drives from the same manufacturer are bad, but I'm sure anything is possible.

I've emailed Cavalry Customer Support with the details of my woes and now must wait to see if I get any response from them. I may just have to dump the Cavalry product and (hesitatingly) order another Seagate.

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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Bigaldoc wrote:No one seems to have any recommendations about this external USB drive thing.
Al, have you tried replacing the USB cables with good quality ones... the shorter, the better. I have been using external drives for at least five years without any issues. The drives have been WD of various capacities. Never with any problems... other that the connection issues referenced above. Recently, I added a Lacie external unit (Hitachi HD) with success.
Regards,
Bob

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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Bigaldoc wrote:No one seems to have any recommendations about this external USB drive thing. <Part II>
Sorry Al, had to logout before finishing the last message because my OutBack Plus backup doesn't like Firefox open when it's time for the scheduled backup.

In earlier parts of this thread, you mention about connecting and disconnecting the USB drives many times. If I assume you mean actually removing the cable from the USB port is it possible that the port connector is now part of the problem? Have you tried other USB ports or added a PCI card with USB ports as a test?

Do not throw out the baby with the bath water!!! :hairout:
Regards,
Bob

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Bigaldoc
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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BobArch2 wrote:In earlier parts of this thread, you mention about connecting and disconnecting the USB drives many times. If I assume you mean actually removing the cable from the USB port is it possible that the port connector is now part of the problem? Have you tried other USB ports or added a PCI card with USB ports as a test?
First of all, these two Cavalry drives came with short USB cables which I'm using. When I disable (disconnect) a USB drive, I usually turn off its power and remove the USB cable from the drive itself, not my powered USB hub (I have so many devices that I bought a good quality, powered hub a long time ago).

So, frankly, I don't think it's a bad cable or the hub, but in the morning, just for the heck of it, I'll try a different cable to see what happens while I wait to see if I hear from the vendor. Over the years I've tended to stay away from WD and I won't bore you with that story from my last employment 8-10 years ago. But maybe it's time I look at WD to see what they have to offer.

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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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First of all, these two Cavalry drives came with short USB cables which I'm using. When I disable (disconnect) a USB drive, I usually turn off its power and remove the USB cable from the drive itself, not my powered USB hub (I have so many devices that I bought a good quality, powered hub a long time ago).
Have you tried a CHKDSK on the Cavalry drives? How about a full, not quick, re-format on one?

Joe
Joe

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StuartR
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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It's interesting that you mention a USB hub. My brother had lots of problems with external USB drives, that went away when he disconnected his external powered USB hub. Even connecting the problem drives directly to the system USB ports didn't help.

Just as an experiment, could you try disconnecting the external hub and see if a backup will complete.
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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Bigaldoc wrote:First of all, these two Cavalry drives came with short USB cables which I'm using. When I disable (disconnect) a USB drive, I usually turn off its power and remove the USB cable from the drive itself, not my powered USB hub (I have so many devices that I bought a good quality, powered hub a long time ago).

Several years ago I also used a hub - what I thought was a good quality unit - DLink. I cannot recall the exact issue nor the problem device, but I switched from the external hub to an internal add-on PCI card with 5 USB ports (4 external/1 internal). My problems disappeared. I have since added another PCI card with a similar configuration. I know you said you have had the two Seagates in operation for over 1.5 years. But as StuartR suggested, perhaps try a set-up without the hub... just as a test.

And now for a comment, for which you have permission to give me a slap up the side of the head... do you just turn off the power to the drive or do you use the "Remove Device" feature in the SysTray? I also recognize you said you have disabled write caching to the drive, but it is still safer to use the RD feature.

And as another note... If you are still triple booting with XP, Vista and Windows 7 who knows what lurks in the evils of the beast! :hairout:
Regards,
Bob

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Bigaldoc
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Re: Failed USB External Drive

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JoeP wrote:Have you tried a CHKDSK on the Cavalry drives? How about a full, not quick, re-format on one?
Well, I haven't tried a format but I did try a CHKDSK and it failed. I can't remember the message I got... that's about when I got mad and turned of its power switch for awhile. I'll have to re-power and try a format, but now that I've emailed Cavalry, I might ought to wait before I do anything else. Thanks, Joe.

For Bob: Much like the chkdsk, I tried the safely remove icon and got a "...can't do that..." kinda message. All of these things in combo are what makes me think the drives are bad, but two in a row? Possible I guess...

The hub is another big matter. I'm not up for the challenge of adding cards rather than a hub. BUT, I've got so many USB devices I've got to have the needed ports. I won't go into a list, but most of my external devices are USB. Experimenting with removal of the hub is a good and viable question, but it'll have to wait for now. Thanks everyone.