SECOND DRIVE ISSUES

[roderickng]

I have a problem that may be a solution is available but my search is not precise enough.

The Windows PC is an Asus P5B-VM SE 965 with an E6550 CPU and 4gb of system memory. The C drive is a WD 120g and the F drive is a WD 160g. The F drive is labeled 'DATA' and is empty. This board has 4 SATA ports and both drives are at SATA 1 and 2 respectively. Recently I installed a brand new WIN TV 1600 tuner card and point the recordings to the DATA drive. Works and records just fine so I doubt this is a WinTV issue.

It looks like after every scheduled recording, something is going on with Windows regarding the F drive. If Windows Explorer is opened, I cannot 'right click' on the desktop or access any Windows menu from 'Start'. Cannot start any program shortcut on the desktop. Basically, cannot do anything. If I close Windows Explorer, then everything is back to normal, I can start the WinTV program or the web browser or any of the Adobe stuff. But if I open Windows Explorer again, the 'Folder' view on the left Explorer pane will be completely blank or white out, as if Windows Explorer is having a problem accessing some directory, and I will be unable to start any programs. With Windows Explorer opened, I cannot even bring up the Task Manager, not with 'right click' on the bar or with C+A+D. With Windows Explorer opened, I cannot shut down the PC through the 'Start - Shut Down' procedure. I can hit 'Shut Down' and nothing happen. I would have to close Win Explorer, then I would be able to use the 'Start' menu normally to reboot to bring everything back to normal again.

Did a complete re-install of XP. In the BIOS, SMART reported both drives to be functional with no issues. I pointed the TV recordings back to the original C\My Videos directory to see if this strange problem will return. Never use a PCI TV tuner card before. I cannot see how simply assigning a drive letter to a second hard drive would create any issues. This second drive is NTFS formatted through the Disk Management utility that came with XP, not with any third party softwares. As of now, I cannot tell if this is a hardware or an XP issue.

 

[pat mcgroin]

I think if you find that by pointing the recordings back to c:\ solves it then I would try to reformat the data drive and try again.

The only other thing I can think of offhand is maybe there is a conflict with the drive lettering.
I am assuming that you have 2 optical drives. Correct me if I am wrong.
Usually the second hdd will be drive D: and the 2 opticals will be E: and F:
Possible that is where the trouble is happening.
Please describe how the drive lettering was setup.
Does drive 1 have 2 partitions or is it as I stated above?

 

[roderickng]

I think if you find that by pointing the recordings back to c:\ solves it then I would try to reformat the data drive and try again.

The only other thing I can think of offhand is maybe there is a conflict with the drive lettering.
I am assuming that you have 2 optical drives. Correct me if I am wrong.
Usually the second hdd will be drive D: and the 2 opticals will be E: and F:
Possible that is where the trouble is happening.
Please describe how the drive lettering was setup.
Does drive 1 have 2 partitions or is it as I stated above?

Yes...There are two optical drives and both are on a single IDE chain. The second hdd have been re-formatted and assigned and each time Windows assigned it F, was done through the Windows Admin Tools utility and the Data drive is NOT active. Both disks are SATA and have their own partitions. I did point the recordings back to C and the problem remain. I mapped the Data drive to an empty folder "C:\Documents and Settings\rod\My Documents\MyTV" and will try that method. I notice that after scheduled recordings and this problem is in progress, WinSCP does not work. It throws an error message saying something about disk quota. Once rebooted, everything works as normal. Wonder if this is caused by the WinTV program. I can leave the program running for hours, no recordings, and nothing goes wrong. But that 'disk quota' error message from Win SCP is curious.

 

[pat mcgroin]

Below is 2 links concerning disk quotas.
It is something I dont know anything about but I would assume it has to do with Win SCP. Maybe not.
As for the restlet me think about it a little more as I just got up not long ago and to be honest the brown bottle fog hasnt yet cleared.
When you say above "It looks like after every scheduled recording, something is going on with Windows regarding the F drive. If Windows Explorer is opened"
is Win TV prog. still running or have it been shut down?
Maybe try it both ways to see what happens?

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/nt_diskquota_overview.mspx?mfr=true

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/win2003/quotas.mspx

 

[roderickng]

Below is 2 links concerning disk quotas.
It is something I dont know anything about but I would assume it has to do with Win SCP. Maybe not.
As for the restlet me think about it a little more as I just got up not long ago and to be honest the brown bottle fog hasnt yet cleared.
When you say above "It looks like after every scheduled recording, something is going on with Windows regarding the F drive. If Windows Explorer is opened"
is Win TV prog. still running or have it been shut down?
Maybe try it both ways to see what happens?

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/nt_diskquota_overview.mspx?mfr=true

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/win2003/quotas.mspx

So this is what I have found so far within the last several days...

If I set recordings but DOES NOT have a Windows Explorer instance opened, no issues. But if I leave a Windows Explorer instance opened and have a scheduled recording, I will have my TV shows but then I would have this strange problem. I have re-installed the WinTV software but no joy. Am not sure if allowing the drives to be indexed for faster search has anything to do with this. All I know is that if I leave Windows Explorer opened with a scheduled recording, I would have to reboot to get everything back to normal. And yes...The WinTV program does quit after the scheduled recording.