b5media.com

Advertise with us

Enjoying this blog? Check out the rest of the Technology Channel Subscribe to this Feed

Microsoft Weblog

Windows - Delayed Write Failed

by Jason Bean on September 13th, 2008

Immediately after formatting my Western Digital 250GB Passport drive, I began seeing the following errors on a regular basis when trying to move all my files back to the drive.

A quick search on the Windows - Delayed Write Failed issue provided a variety of possible causes and solutions which I began tracking down and trying to implement fixes as expected.

The first page listed in the results seemed to have some good things I could check, 8 common causes for ‘delayed write failed’ errors.

  1. Problems with device driver, especially a SCSI or RAID device drive
  2. Cabling problems
  3. SCSI termination errors
  4. Media errors
  5. BIOS settings on the computer are forcing faster UDMA modes than the drive controller can handle
  6. Controller issues
  7. Memory parity issues
  8. The LargeSystemCache Registry tweak and ATI video adapters

From my guesses and information, I figured my best options were probably those I bolded above. I checked all of them and didn’t seem to have any problems. One thing I’m going to do though is that I found another cable so I’m going to try yet another different one and see if that may be the case.

What’s been everyone else’s experience with this error? Have you had experience with the error on a Western Digital passport (Western Digital website details) drive like mine?

I’m just not sure if the drive itself is shot or it’s something I can recover.

A little bit more reading and searching and I found the following resources that I’m giving a try.

Share This

Related Stories

POSTED IN: Help and Support, Software Errors, Windows XP Pro

6 opinions for Windows - Delayed Write Failed

  • Carl Wainwright
    Oct 10, 2008 at 5:26 am

    Hi there,

    I have this problem as well when I use my device on my client’s windows machine. I get it a lot with E:\$Mft

    It claims that the data has been lost, but when I restart the drive nothing has been lost!

    I have ran all the diagnotics utilities from WD and none report any errors. I’m in two minds as to backup the data and return it to WD for a replacement…

  • Jason Bean
    Oct 10, 2008 at 7:31 am

    My suggestion would be to make a back-up for sure. Setup some kind of synchronized backup so you can continually be assured nothing will be lost if that drive fails. If you only get the error on your client’s computer, it might be interesting to see if you get the error with another portable drive if you can find one. I’ve been happy with my new Maxtor drive.

  • steven
    Oct 10, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    I had the error come up. After racking my brain I finally figured out the problem. I have external usb hard drives that were producing the error. The solution was to power off my usb epson printer before attempting to do backups on the hard drive.
    There seem to be a conflict of information going out over the usb ports. Needless to say, all attempts to alert epson, wd, and microsoft of the problem seemed to lead to a dead end. Hope this info will put you on the path to solving the problem.

  • Jason Bean
    Oct 10, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    Is that to say that I shouldn’t have any other active USB devices when I’m trying to transfer files?

  • steven
    Oct 10, 2008 at 10:30 pm

    I would turn off all other usb devices and see if the error disappears. If this resolves the problem than try turning on one device at a time until you isolate the cause. I suspect that a device is polling the port at the same time the file is being transferred.

  • Stephanie
    Oct 18, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    I’m Googling now as I just got this problem yesterday when I hooked up my Samsung WE Box 500 (bought in France), a multimedia box to be used for films, etc. I have two new external removable USB drives (500 and 250 gigs) that are on all the time. When I attached the WE Box, I lost one of the removable drives and with that famous message being displayed. I panicked and reset the system. The second time I lost the second removable drive. On both resets, the WE Box was detected. I didn’t like that DWF message so I removed the WE Box, reset the system and all was OK. Since then I’ve attached the WE Box to a spare old laptop and didn’t have any problems. The only problem is that the performance is pitiful–too slow for anything and you know how large video files can be! To get any files onto that WE Box, I send files over via the wireless network. I wonder if there are other solutions so I can use the WE Box on my regular system.

Have an opinion? Leave a comment: