External hard drive problem

Hi,

I just bought a 200 Gb external firewire/USB 2.0 hard drive in a 3.5"
case for my standalone Dell notebook. Although it worked flawlessly to
back up my data, when I run some tasks like intensive processing of
images on this drive and even the Windows XP defrag utility, the hard
drive stops working and disconnects itself. I then have to switch it off
then back on again to get it to reappear under My Computer. When ever
this happens, Windows XP reports this error:

"Windows - Delayed Write Failed
Windows was unable to save all the data for the file G???. 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'm reasonably clueless about what to do in these situations but I did
run the Windows XP disk error checking utility (which took literally a
couple of hours). This did not report any problems.

I'm wondering what might be causing this annoying problem. Is there some
hardware settings I need to tweak or is this likely to be a bad disk
drive? I should say that I'm using the firewire port. My other option is
USB 1.1.

Thanks for your help.

--
All the best,
Pete

------------------------------------------------
Home Page: http://users.bigpond.com/lansma
Location: 42°53'S; 147°19'E

Don't know if this will help but it is a place to start.

Make sure that the external drive self powered. Do not rely on the power
supplied by the USB port.

Tom Woodrow

Pete wrote:

 > Hi,
 >
 > I just bought a 200 Gb external firewire/USB 2.0 hard drive in a 3.5"
 > case for my standalone Dell notebook. Although it worked flawlessly to
 > back up my data, when I run some tasks like intensive processing of
 > images on this drive and even the Windows XP defrag utility, the hard
 > drive stops working and disconnects itself. I then have to switch it off
 > then back on again to get it to reappear under My Computer. When ever
 > this happens, Windows XP reports this error:
 >
 > "Windows - Delayed Write Failed
 > Windows was unable to save all the data for the file G???. 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'm reasonably clueless about what to do in these situations but I did
 > run the Windows XP disk error checking utility (which took literally a
 > couple of hours). This did not report any problems.
 >
 > I'm wondering what might be causing this annoying problem. Is there some
 > hardware settings I need to tweak or is this likely to be a bad disk
 > drive? I should say that I'm using the firewire port. My other option is
 > USB 1.1.
 >
 > Thanks for your help.
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->