Anyone knows what 'windows-delayed write failed' means need a translator

Question

It sounds a bit arabic, abit chinese, abit indian and so forth i have no idea what it means! It's an error that appears, this post is related somewhat to the previous post i posted regarding PCMCIA card. It seems my Laptop hates my PCMCIA USB 2, and as a domino effect my hardisk is gettin the brunt of all this!   It reads: windows-delayed write failed. windows was unable to save all the data for the file G:\$Mft. the data has been lost. this error may e caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.    Please help, i really need this PCMCIA card usb 2 to be working togather with my laptop. Otherwise, web cam, my printer, external hardisk and incoming speaker will be fighting for a 1 port USB 1.0 port!  ARGGG!!! Dell HELP!!!!

JersWork · Answer

The delayed write failure is relatively simple to understand. It means that your system loses connection to the external disk attached to your USB2 PC Card. To improve system performance, the OS will cache disk writes and write them to the disk as it has the free time. If the system loses its connection to the disk before the entire cache is written, the disk updates are lost (and thus so is your information). With each time this happens you risk corrupting the entire drive and losing everything on it, not just the updates in the cache.

If your USB2 PC Card is dropping devices, you have several possibilities. First, the OS may be configured to turn the power off on the devices to save power, you may have a device which is drawing too much power causing other devices to not have enough power to operate properly, or your PC Card could jst plain be bad.

Do you have the problems if the external disk is the only device attached to the USB 2 card?

TheSeaOfLostSou · Answer

if the external hardisk is attached to my USB 1.0 on board, there seems to be no problem at all. The only problem arises is with the PCMCIA card and the laptop, i think the hardware does not have enough power to sustain the PCMCIA card.   I have tested this on other laptops, such as Acer, Compaq, and inspiron 8200, all came up with satisfactory conclusion. That my docking station for the PCMCIA card is faulty. Read also a post that i've posted regarding incompatibility between PCMCIA card and 4150.   I haven't used it for quite sometime (until now which i needed it most), but i acknowledge the problem for quite sometime because dell told me everything was fine. (which in fact wasn't). I've not only tested it on my USB pcmcia card but also my wireless PCMCIA card. Both are having alot of problems. I note the possibility it might corrupt my hardisk if this kind of short-circuit continues, and i am pretty worried about it. any solutions ?

NemesisDB · Answer

For what it's worth, it happens to my firewire drive fairly regularly, even with write-caching turned off (i.e. optimized for quick/hot removal turned on).  Keep the drive as an NTFS partition and run chkdsk each time it happens and you'll probably be fine.

Ray Dragon · Answer

I, too, am experiencing delayed write errors. Not on an external drive, however, but on my Inspiron 9200's internal Hitachi drive (formatted as NTFS with XP Pro as the OS). I have tried to disable write caching for the hdd using Hitachi's hdd tool, but as soon as I reboot the system from the bootable CD containing the tool, caching is re-enabled.

Anyone have any suggestions as to how to solve this error. The options are greyed-out on the Policies tab for the hdd, so trying Microsoft's "fix" is not an option.

Thanks in advance

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Anyone knows what "windows-delayed write failed" means need a translator

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