Windows Delayed Write Failure – USB 2.0 Hub and External HDD

hard driveusbwindows-xp

I have a test server that runs Windows XP, and we attach an external hard drive to it via USB 2.0. (And yes the computer has USB 2.0 ports on it)

The drive is a 1.5 Terrabyte Segate FreeAgent drive (model ST315005FDA2E1-RK) which is formatted with NTFS. It is

hooked into a Belkin Hi-speed USB 2.0 7 port hub (model #F5U307).
Hi-speed USB 2.0 7 port hub model #F5U307

If I leave the external hard drive connected to it for too long I get a message that says something about "Windows Delayed Write Failure" and then the external HDD re-attaches itself to the server, but it always crashes any programs that happened to be using the drive at the time as well.

Is there any solution to this problem, it's plauged me for years!

P.S. Yeah, I know I should probably upgrade already. I'm waiting for Windows 7.

(Oh, and after taking a look at the specs on the FreeAgent website, apparently after 15-minutes of non-usage this thing turns off! It says however that you can adjust this setting…)

Update

Just as an update to this question, since I tried changing the power save settings to off, I've left the drive and a virtual machine I had running on all day and thus far have not received the "Windows Delayed Write Failure" error that I had received before. If anything changes I will update the post.

Update 2

I started having the same problem again after I made a fix to the power settings. I looked around at a couple of pages on the Internet about this, and one of them said that if you have it hooked up to a USB hub that can't handle it, that you'll start getting "Windows Delayed Write Failure" errors. I've now started plugging the external HDD directly into the machine not using the hub, and that seems to take care of the problem.

Best Answer

Your external hard drive has probably gone into power save mode and its power up sequence is taking a fraction longer than Windows is prepared to wait. Once Windows has decided that the device had a serious error, it's probably forceable unmounting the drive and reattaching all over again, which is why it shows up on the desktop again.

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