[Spinman]

Just started to recieve a "Delayed Write Failed" error on one of my hard drives.
No idea why it just started. The drive passes diagnostics. I reviewed the info on MS Q330174 trying to determine the problem / solution.

http://support.micro...om/?kbid=330174
"Delayed Write Failed" Error Message When You Manage Files in Windows XP"

Question: I would like to turn off write caching on the disk in question - but I am unable to access the options on the policies tab screen - it is greyed out. How can I activate this so that I can change the options?


**************

Note If you turn off the "Enable write caching on the disk" feature, your disk performance may decrease. Because of this, you may want to monitor system performance after you complete the following procedure.
In Windows Explorer, right-click your hard-disk, and then click Properties.
Click the Hardware tab.
Click the hard disk, and then click Properties.
Click the Policies tab.
Click to clear the Enable write caching on the disk check box, and then click OK two times.

[XtremeMaC]

is that an external drive or internal?

[XP_2600]

Please go to run and type compmgmt.msc then go to event viewer application branch and get me what winlogon saved in there, it will be the info of the scan so we can know more.

[Spinman]

Still having problems with the Delayed Write Failed error message....
Here's the info from a recently completed scan on a new drive installed this evening.


Event Type: Information
Event Source: Winlogon
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1001
Date: 3/19/2004
Time: 11:00:54 PM
User: N/A
Computer: xxxxx-xxxxxxx
Description:
Checking file system on J:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is External Drive #3 [160g].

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up 3 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 3 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 3 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

156288320 KB total disk space.
2656 KB in 20 files.
20 KB in 17 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
7292 KB in use by the system.
2048 KB occupied by the log file.
156278352 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
39072080 total allocation units on disk.
39069588 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
3c 00 00 00 30 00 00 00 35 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 <...0...5.......
02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
de 39 1a 00 00 00 00 00 a0 25 26 00 00 00 00 00 .9.......%&.....
92 fe 1e 00 00 00 00 00 ec 60 21 00 00 00 00 00 .........`!.....
68 18 e1 ed 0a 00 00 00 b0 20 84 f5 0a 00 00 00 h........ ......
99 9e 36 00 00 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..6.............
00 80 29 00 00 00 00 00 11 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..).............


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft....link/events.asp.

[Spinman]

And some more additional information from my experiments tonight...

I am using 2 WD ATA/100 drives attached to a Maxtor ATA/133 PCI card.
Both drives are jumpered to cable select and are attached to the same eide cable (40 pin / 80 wire).

Both drives are using a removable rack / tray system (Kingwin KF-23).

When I try and transfer a directory from the C: drive (motherboard) to the WD drive in the "slave" position on the cable - I receive the delayed write failed error message.

Disconnected the "master" from the cable and tried the transfer again - the "slave" drive failed again.

Moved the "slave" drive to the "master" position (slave position now open) and the transfer works A-OK.

So it would appear on the surface that the drive is ok - the problem seems to occur only when transfering data to a drive in the "slave" position - the "master" position works fine.

I'm assuming that the problem is either:
1) a defective EIDE cable or
2) a defective rack

Tomorrow, I will try switching the trays on the cable and see if the problem remains with the "slave" position or if it remains with the tray and moves to the "master" position.

I'm also assuming that the fact that I have the drives setup as cable select (so I can insert any tray into any rack) would not cause the delayed write failed error. I'm able to read from both drives fine - just difficulity writing at the current time.

More to come...

[XtremeMaC]

try cable select on the drives
I had this type of error on my usb2/firewire combo hdd.

[Spinman]

Already setup as cable select on both drives (so that I can insert any tray into any rack and not worry about the configuration)....

[Spinman]

After a lot of experimentation today I have come to the conclusion that the delayed write error I get (dependent upon cable position) is not cable related.

I swapped all variable hardware combinations and always came up with the same error - and was resigned to conclude that it was a bad cable (which had never before given me any problems).

I then decided to swap the PCI ATA/133 card with a PCI ATA/100 card - and behold - the error disappeared. So it would seem that the problem came about because of a forced higher dma than the ATA/100 drive was able to handle.

Now my problem is - I can't get the ATA/133 and ATA/100 cards to work at the same time in the system - not automatically selecting the proper interrupts.....