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Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 10:34 am
by genevh
every time I turn my externals off, I am getting a "delayed write failed".


I unplugged one of my EHD's and left it off for nearly 30 minutes and did not get any errors. How long would it take before you start getting the errors?

Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 10:52 am
by suzib
They only started showing up about a month ago after I installed sp3. The error message shows up within seconds of turning the drive off. Little pop-up in right hand corner of computer. I have googled it and it seems to be very common with these externals. Watching to see if anyone comes up with a fix. I don't like having to uninstall everytime I turn it off. I guess it doesn't hurt is though

Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 12:49 pm
by geoff_chalcraft
The problem I had last year with a new external drive was due to the drive reformatting itself for some reason. I lost quite a lot of pictures and haven't actually dared to put anything back on it yet - I sent it to the 'factory' (or distributors) and they couldn't salvage anything so I got it back. Looks pretty, but totally useless as it is, so I may just try some duplicates on it and see what happens. It's a "Simpledrive Deluxe".

Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:18 pm
by lruther1
As I put my pics on the EHD, I also burn to dvd. A pain to load onto a new drive, but usually cheaper to buy a new one than repair or try to retrieve pics. New noises can often mean the drive is fixing to fail and would be proactive to copy onto a new drive.

Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 5:38 pm
by westiemom
I make sure I have two backups of my photos. When my external drive died last year there was no warning at all. One day it was working and the next it was dead. I've now become paranoid about two copies.

Anita

Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:53 am
by jlwilm
Suzi,

Have you had any luck with this.

I am using esata connection on my Vista laptop (and connecting the same drive via USB in WinXP) apparently without problems.

I Googled and only found stuff that left me musing about what to do with XP - and I will be in a position shortly to want to connect via esata to my XP sysetm shortly.

It looks like these drives aren't really meant to be turned on and off during the session. Do you use the drives all the time or just for external backup? If for external backup, have you considered changing your workflow and making the backup the last thing you do before shutting down?

FYI, I am using my drive as a external backup on XP and use SyncToy to echo the data from My Documents to the SATA drive. I then plug that (when I want to) into my laptop and I have a USER on that system that connects to that SATA drive via the esata connection as My Documents for the laptop (If that makes sense).

What it lets me do is crank stuff out on my desktop (which is still the fastest) and then when I go to my Camera Club meetings I use the laptop with everything I have at home available.

Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:07 am
by genevh
My externals don't even have an off switch. I'd have to physically unplug them, which is a pain. Therefore I don't do it. The drive that suddenly decided to go AWOL on me is a couple of years old now, but I don't think its the drive itself but the interface circuitry in the enclosure. I was able to copy all the files from it, so nothing was lost. All my downloads (including LR2 and CS3) were on that drive.

Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:13 am
by suzib
That is a good thought, John but if I just do a shutdown of computer at night won't the externals come back on when I turn computer on it the morning?

Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:15 am
by genevh
They should. At least mine do. :D I rarely have to touch them, and that is usually to dust my desk.

Re: What happens when?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 12:09 pm
by suzib
Now that is a problem, if they both come on with computer starts, it will not completely come on. I have to turn the externals off before it will finish loading. Weird, huh.