Gibni - The Prime » desktop computers

Windows Delayed Write Failed Error – Solutions

Gi — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:22:18 +0000

Window Delayed Write Failed ? Solutions are here!

This topic is researched, tested and written by Amir Hossein Moradi.

This is the third article on the Windows Delayed Write Failed error occurring with hard drives (mostly external ones with USB/Firewire/Network connections). On 28th December 2007, I wrote the Windows – Delayed Write Failed – Solved! article which had more than 190,000 views, and helped many users till date. On 9th June 2008, the second article on this topic – Windows Delayed Write Failed – Latest Solution – which had more than 34,000 views till date, was out and is still getting many users out of trouble.

Now, it’s time to write the 3rd article and sum up all possible solutions for the Windows Delayed Write Failed error.

About Delayed Write:

Windows uses a special subsystem for certain disk functions, which caches write operations and performs them when the system is idle. This can improve system performance, but it’s typically turned off by default. The term for this kind of operation is “delayed writing”.

You can see how write-caching is handled for a particular volume by right-clicking on the icon for the drive in the “Disk drives” subtree of the Device Manager and selecting the Policies tabs. The options typically are “Optimize for quick removal” (everything is written to the drive immediately) and “Optimize for performance” (writes are cached).

About the error:

“Windows Delayed Write Failed” error occurs usually when the caching process gets interrupted or the files to be cached get corrupted, either because of a drive failure, a cable failure, or a USB interface fail!

This error might happen to brand new drives as well as good working old ones.

Cause:

This error might be caused by several factors:

Cache settings
System Restore settings
Device drivers
Media error, drive failure
USB/Firewire host controllers
Drive overheating
Mis-configured BIOS settings
Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) mis-configuration
Unmatched cables
Faulty cables
Memory parity conflict
Power management drivers

On the next page(s) I’ll discuss all the working and possible solutions to this issue.

Buy a Laptop

Gi — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:09:27 +0000

You gotta buy one someday… no matter when, you’ll have to know what to buy.

so let me give you some tips and advice,

You got some budget, now you need a reason to buy a laptop,

Suppose you live in a very crowded city and you got a small flat of 90 meters square so you need to use your space as efficient as possible, and you cant waste 5 meter square for a desktop PC,

Or, you are always on the move, and anyway you need to carry a computer with you so better be a laptop instead of a desktop computer!

Another thing is that laptops use batteries, so the power output of the battery is limited and known, but desktop computers are connected to the AC Mains of your house, and therefore there is less risk of burning components in laptops!

Think of your eyes too! in desktops with CRT monitor you may get weak eyes after a while, but in laptops and also LCD/PLASMA monitors there is NO RADIATION and you get safe when it comes to eyes.

Power consumption; it’s considerably low when it’s a laptop, as a desktop will get you higher electricity bills!

With all these reasons or the reason that you want a laptop just for fun or for showing it off to your friends let’s move on and talk about how to choose one…

The Laptop:

First thing is the look you should love. Go in the market and see what you can find,

Then it comes to the manufacturer company, better it be a well known company with good customer care and support in your area or the areas you will travel to.

The technical part, which is the inside of your laptop.

The speed, the memory, the features and so on…

before anything, specify your budget and then buy the best laptop in your budget.

* – Let’s start with the processor;

There are two big manufacturers of processors: Intel and AMD.

Whoever you choose get the fastest and most recent processor model. you can find these information in their own websites. and Google.com is a very useful tool while doing research and taking decisions. By date the fastest CPU with intel is Intel Core Duo Processor with Intel Centrio Mobile Technology.

There are two factors when it comes to processors (CPU), first is the clock speed and second is internal cache (L2), where both are important. Don’t get fooled by the clock speed only, you should pay attention to the L2 cache provided.

for example, a 1.7GHz (clock speed) with 1MB of L2 cache is much slower than the same processor with 2MB of L2 cache!

* – Now it comes to RAM which is a big player for your computer’s speed. the more RAM the faster your applications run. Go for as high capacity as you can on RAM.

SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, where SDRAM is the slowest and DDR2 is the fastest. refer to your budget for choosing.

* – The Hard Drive; where you store your data in,

any capacity more than 60 GB will do. so just see what you can afford and how much data you will have to store.

* - Media disc reader… better be a DVD Writer with dual layer support or AT LEAST a DVD combo (i.e. CD Writer + DVD Reader) (You can go for a BluRay disc reader/writer, but it’s still too costly)

* – Communication…

Check for broadband and modem connectivity, wireless network cards available, infrared availability, integrated bluetooth, USB ports, IEEE 1394 port, and any other port you may need, be careful that more connectivity options will give you better compatibility in different areas.

* – Display size and graphics card…

The bigger and W I D E R screen, the better view, but you will have to carry more weight… so see what you like about the display size.

on graphics card, normally these days laptops come with 128MB on-board shared memory graphics card, which will do for many recent games. but think again if you are presented with a 64MB graphics.

* – Accessories…

Think about your needs and budget, then choose what you want.

* – Warranty

try to get the best warranty option from the company and check for a GLOBAL WARRANTY option if available.

and now you can go through the market and you’ll know what to look for, and the seller can’t fool you anymore.

Windows – Delayed Write Failed – Solved!

Gi — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 02:30:36 +0000

UPDATE 2: Latest article: Window Delayed Write Failed – Solutions –>

UPDATE 1: New post with new solution: Click Here

I bought a 500 GB Western Digital My Book Premium external hard drive. For few days, everything was working fine, but suddenly the Delayed Wrifte Failed error started to pop up and my drive was no more accessible. Here’s the error displayed on Windows:

“Windows – Delayed Write Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file X:\$Mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.”

I searched a lot but nothing came up. I had to restart the drive, disconnect and reconnect it again to make it work which was a lot of pain!

Well, before we get to the working solution (for my case), read and see the following :

UPDATE 2: Latest article: Window Delayed Write Failed – Solutions –>

UPDATE 1: New post with new solution: Click Here

I searched a lot but nothing came up. I had to restart the drive, disconnect and reconnect it again to make it work which was a lot of pain!

Well, before we get to the working solution (for my case), read and see the following :

From Others:

According to the article “8 common causes for ‘delayed write failed’ errors” by Serdar Yegulalp , from SearchWinIT.com which was published on 01.05.2005,

The first option lets you quickly disconnect drives — for instance, hot-pluggable USB “pen” drives — without first disconnecting them via the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray. If all the options are grayed out, this means write-caching is probably handled at the discretion of the device driver. (You can see more information about the way the defaults for write caching work in the Microsoft article, “Windows XP and Surprise Removal of Hardware“.

In Windows XP, the system may pop up a “Delayed Write Failed” notification balloon, which means that something has gone wrong with the delayed-write system. This does not always mean there has been a fatal problem, but you should take it seriously.

Some common reasons for a delayed-write failure are:

Problems with a device driver, especially a SCSI or RAID device driver. Some RAID device drivers are known to issue spurious “Delayed Write Failed” errors in XP Service Pack 2. Most manufacturers have been alerted to this, so check to make sure the disk drivers are up-to-date.
Cabling problems. A faulty or broken cable — especially for an external USB or Firewire enclosure—can generate this error. It can also happen if the cable is too long, or if it is hooked up through a hub that isn’t up to spec. Another possible culprit is if you have a UDMA drive that requires an 80-pin cable, and you are using a 40-pin cable.
SCSI termination errors. This has become less likely with the advent of self-terminating SCSI hardware, but it shouldn’t be counted out.
Media errors. This is the worst possible scenario — essentially, drive failure. If you can garner statistics on the drive via SMART (such as SMART & Simple (http://www.beyondlogic.org/solutions/smart/smart.html), you may be able to determine if there’s a mechanical failure in the offing. Gibson Research’s SpinRite tool (http://grc.com/) is also useful for assessing media errors, but be warned: It may take a long time to do a thorough test.
BIOS settings on the computer are forcing faster UDMA modes than the drive controller can handle. This is unlikely, especially with newer hardware (which can support UDMA far more flexibly), but it can usually be fixed with a BIOS upgrade, or by resetting the BIOS entries for the hard drives to auto-detect settings. Devices set to UDMA Mode 6 that produce this error, for instance, might need to be set to Mode 5.
Controller issues. I’ve observed that USB controllers that contend strongly with other hardware can produce this error. In systems that have both “long” and “short” PCI slots (i.e., 64-bit and 32-bit), try moving the USB controller to the long slot. Older PCI cards will not fit in such a slot.
Memory parity issues. If the problem appears after installing new memory, the memory in question may be faulty or not of the correct type for the motherboard in question. (This may go hand-in-hand with other problems such as random lockups, too.)
The LargeSystemCache Registry tweak and ATI video adapters. One peculiar set of circumstances that has been observed on multiple machines with ATI video adapters and more than 512MB of memory involves the LargeSystemCache Registry setting, a DWORD entry found in: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE >SYSTEM >CurrentControlSet >Control >Session Manager >Memory Management
This setting governs the amount of memory set aside by the system for certain kernel processes. If it’s set to 1 (which allegedly improves performance on systems with more than 512MB of memory), it can cause data corruption on some systems, and produce the “Delayed Write Failed” error. Try resetting it to 0 if it’s been set.

Now that you have read the 8 common causes for this error, let’s see about what worked for my case.

Recently I found another solution to this problem that really worked for me. It’s on the next page…