Delayed Write Failed - why does such a thing exist?

[Marcos]

Whats the point in it telling me a file has been transferred, "but not really...only joking, i'm still transferring it now behind your back while you do something else"

How do i turn this off? I want it so that when i transfer a file to the external i knwo for sure it is there and windows is not slacking telling me it has done something when it really hasnt

[Marcos]

It just did it again , i'm not even disconnecting the drive or anything, the drive has been plugged in for days, the computer has been on for days. I moved 400mb of files over, then 10 mins later that exact same message pops up ^

I hope H:\$Mft is a pointless file of no importance, or this is going to get annoying

[directhex]

delayed write is a system for removable storage, such as USB sticks, which are fairly slow to write to - rather than write ever change to the thing immediately, it caches which changes need to be made (quickly), then actually writes them when you unmount the disk (safely remove hardware)

you can disable delayed write on any disk via my computer properties, though it should only be possible & enabled for external disks. it _WILL_ slow down access to that device if you disable delayed write

[Dougal]

Erm..

$MFT is the Master File Table. Not good to loose it......

Reccomend you get the data off, chkdsk it, and maybe fully reformat it.

[Paul Adams]

KB330174: "Delayed Write Failed" error message when you manage files in Windows XP

[Pealy]

I've experienced problems with DWF's twice lately. Firstly just before my HD died and then when trying to copy data to the replacement and losing lots of it. My advice is to heed the warning and look at what's going wrong. In my case it has been a signal of hard drive failure a sign that my hardware was old & outdadted. Moving from a Celeron 667mhz to a new mobo with P4 2.4ghz made them go away.

[DaveBG]

You cau use the drive`s options panel in the device manager (computer > properties > hardware > device manager) to disable "Delayed Write"

[Marcos]

Erm..

$MFT is the Master File Table. Not good to loose it......

Reccomend you get the data off, chkdsk it, and maybe fully reformat it.

That would explain why the drive has just decided not to show up for several days now.

Although it did show up and work fine just yesterday A bit temperamental

Is there a file utility that will copy data between 2 drives very well? I need the full 180GB copied to another indentical drive with no errors

[TheAnimus]

what connection is the drive on marcos? and have you truned off write caching for it?

if its IDE try turning down the access speed.

Delayed write for physical drives excists as a means to allow applications to continue onwards whilst data is still been written, this is a very usefull idea. I had a computer that was having crippling problems with this, turns out the SCSI cable was half out. So make sure the IDE cable is a good one and its nothing silly like that (also check ur not sucking down too much current from the PSU 12v rail.)

[Marcos]

Its a Samsung IDE 200GB drive in an Icybox USB2.0 enclosure.

I'm not familiar with access speed settings. Don't know where those are either.

It just did it again with the same MFT file, crashed XP and i havd to do a bad reset. Has come back on and working okay again. Not liking this though.

Thinking of doing a full chkdsk /f

[Curly]

IcyBox strikes again..... I had this problem with my icybox while connected by firewire, would advise to back up any and all data that you can as I eventually lost all mine and it wouldn't recorgnise the disk. a firm ware update and reformat eventually sorted it for me, links to the firmware/flash utill can be found in this thread Here

hth, Curly

[Guy1]

We use loads of Icyboxes at work and don't have any problems. Delayed write is used on most larger storage devices, and is just caching to improve performance.

Delayed write errors occur when the OS has acknowleged the write request but is unable to complete the physical write to the device. This is usually due to device failure, connection failure or power supply to the device. I would look at connections at the USB hub/cable/card and also check USB drivers.

Cheap nasty USB cards in sluggish or overloaded PCI buses in older machines can also struggle if there's lots of DAM or interrupts going on.

Delayed write is meant to be turned off for removable media like pen drives, but I think Windows gets confused when presented with a 200G drive and turns it on. You can right-click the drive on explorer, select properties, select the hardware tab and then click a further properties button to change the settings.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think turning it off works if the drive is formatted as NTFS - the setting gets ignored.

Guy

[scottyman]

Delayed write errors are usually indicative of more serious problems - I've had that on drives attached to a SCSI backplane - had the chassis and mobo replaced, and the errors went away (it was the hot-swap backplane)

Definitely check the power supply - ensure you're getting clean voltage, and check the r/w speed that you're getting on the disk(s) - my guess is that it's power.

[Curly]

iirc it is a know problem with Icyboxes.

Curly

[scottyman]

Curly: think you're right - some of them have cheaper disk controllers/usb interfaces - but I didn't think that would cause the delayed write problems?