Delayed write failed- on external usb hard drive

buthed

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Nov 25, 2006
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(Windows Xp home sp3 btw)
I just recently tried to defrag my external hard drive (Fantom Drives Titanium II - 500GB) and Windows gave me these "Delayed write failed" errors. Ever since, the drive doesn't show up under my computer or even disk management. The drivers are still there, I tried uninstalling and plugging the drive in again. It popped up the remove hardware in the tray but still nothing shows up in my computer or disk management.
I tried removing it from its external enclosure and connecting it via SATA, Windows doesn't seem to want to start when it's connected, but it does show up in BIOS.
I'm not sure what else to try, did my drive just die? Anyway to save some of the data without paying several hundred dollars on a recovery service?
 

jdhobby

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Feb 7, 2009
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I had a "Delayed write failed" error once on a WD 120 GB IDE HD and I moved it to another PC. Sure enough, the problem moved to that PC and it seemed to really slow everything down as well. The HD was failing and WD replaced it under warranty.
 

buthed

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I tried moving PCs it doesn't get recognized by the other computer either. The boot order shouldn't matter because I always keep windows on my one IDE drive and everything else on either my SATA drive or what used to be my external USB drive. But I only have on SATA cable I have to switch out my other SATA drive for the external SATA drive.
The "bad drive" just causes the computer to hang when windows is about to startup.
Edit: Got it to run while in safe mode but still drive is not recognized.
If it's dead the warranty for the internal drive is 3 years and I got it last year, get it replaced by Western Digital, but if I can I would try to get any data that was on the original drive, if I could get it to work again or at the least salvage the data without spending loads of cash.
 

buthed

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I got a quote from a data recovery dude and he says that its due to corrupted firmware on the hard drive and that you need special equipment and stuff, the drive wasn't that important and I'm willing to make do without the data if it saves me a few hundred dollars. I'll probably just use the warranty to get a new drive.

This was one of those back up your data moments.
 

erendofe

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Apr 3, 2009
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this is a driver issue.
I get this with my EXT 500GB from time to time.

here are some options:
1) restart teh pc with the drive in a different usb port (maybe 50/50 sucess)

2) find the correct USB root hub in device manager and any USB mass storage drivers in device manager nad uninstall them. (be mindful if you have usb KB/mouse). after doing this right click on the computer name at the top of the list and select scan for hardware changes.
 

pepe2907

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Easiest thing to do: go to Device Manager or Disk Management /in Admin Tools>Computer management/ - on any of the places find the problematic drive and rightclick on it. Go to Properties. In properties dialog window go to Policies tab and switch it from Optimize for Performance to Optimize for Quick Removal


Hope this will help