External HDD on USB 2 errors....

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

XP does not play well with external NTFS disks. What is happening is XP
is failing to flush the I/O buffer before the disk is disconnected or
the computer is turned off. I would recommend turning off System
Restore on that disk first of all. Second, you never mentioned when this
is happening. Is this only when you remove the drive from the computer?
Finally, it could, but most likely isn't, be related to the external
case. I would check everything else before I blame that though.

----
Nathan McNulty


Max Burke wrote:
> Just installed an 120Gb external HDD through a USB 2 card in a PCI slot.
>
> I can do backups to the drive either by dragging, copying, and with XP's
> NTBackup program. Running Chkdsk shows no file system errors or formatting
> errors.
> Disk management shows the 3 partitions set up on the drive are healthy.
>
> IOW It's all running OK with no conflicts with the MBO USB 1.1 ports except
> for the following error messages in the system folder of the event viewer
> when shutting down XP.
>
> Error messages.
> ============
> Event Type: Warning
> Event Source: Ftdisk
> Event Category: Disk
> Event ID: 57
> Date: 5/08/2004
> Time: 8:21:29 p.m.
> User: N/A
> Computer: CRAY1000
> Description:
> The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may
> occur.
>
> For more information, see Help and Support Center at
> http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
>
> [And:]
>
> Event Type: Warning
> Event Source: Disk
> Event Category: None
> Event ID: 51
> Date: 5/08/2004
> Time: 8:21:29 p.m.
> User: N/A
> Computer: CRAY1000
> Description:
> An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\D during a paging
> operation.
>
> For more information, see Help and Support Center at
> http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
>
> [and occasionally]
>
> Event Type: Warning
> Event Source: Ntfs
> Event Category: None
> Event ID: 50
> Date: 4/08/2004
> Time: 11:56:15 p.m.
> User: N/A
> Computer: CRAY1000
> Description:
> {Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file
> . The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your
> computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file
> elsewhere.
>
> For more information, see Help and Support Center at
> http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
> ===============
>
> From the links in these error messages it could possibly be a timing
> problem. (XP cant write a file to the drive in time, or is writing it too
> fast)
>
> I currently have system restore monitoring the drive/partitions, could this
> be the file(s) that XP is trying to write to the drive on shutdown?
>
> Is it a good Idea to have system restore monitoring an external drive?
>
> Hardware details.
> The HD is a Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 120Gb drive with an 8Mb cache
> installed in an ICT USB 2 external drive case..
> The USB 2 card is an NEC 4 port USB 2/PCI card.
>
> XP starts up and shuts down OK, with no delays...
> I'm running XPH with SP1, and current with all updates.
>