Windows – Delayed Write Failed
September 13, 2008 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
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.
- Problems with device driver, especially a SCSI or RAID device drive
- Cabling problems
- SCSI termination errors
- Media errors
- BIOS settings on the computer are forcing faster UDMA modes than the drive controller can handle
- Controller issues
- Memory parity issues
- 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.
- Windows – Delayed Write Failed – Solved! | Gibni.com
- Some Free Drive and System Utilities from BusTrace
- Error message that you may receive when you save or move documents in Windows XP: “Delayed Write Failed” on Microsoft Forums
- Windows Delayed Write Failed Discussion on Yahoo! Answers
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…
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.
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.
Is that to say that I shouldn’t have any other active USB devices when I’m trying to transfer files?
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.
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.
hello – my DWF problem was caused because I was plugging in my external HDD via USB using the port that my printer had been connected to (without restarting Windows). So I guess Windows was confused that it was getting HDD data instead of printer-ish data? Anyway, plugging the HDD into a different USB port solved the problem :)
I thought that was probably an issue as well, but I tried all my USB ports multiple times. Could be I just confused Windows more though.
I think my problem is exactly as steven described it – steven if u read this, please could u elaborate on what u said. thx a lot
To Muaz: You say you have the same problem. What hardware do you have attached? Did you do what I suggested by turning off power to printer when using a usb drive? I suspect the conflict might be that my Epson printer needs the installation to take place from the cd not windows internal program. But I just resolved myself to work around it by powering down printer while doing backups.
guys,
if its any help, I have a 160Gb Medion ext HDD USB which ive had for over a year now and until yesterday has worked OK. Away with work, i tried to copy 5 Gb of data to it y/day and after a few Mb the drive stopped responding and died. I then get all sorts of delayed write failure messages. wasted nearly an hour trying various things, all to no avail.
As it was plugged into the works laptop which has no administrator functions enabled, I had to wait till today and sort it at home.
Having checked the unit, i found some bad sectors and reformatted it. No difference. changed it to FAT32 and rformatted. no difference. started looking on the net. the write enable is greyed out, although I have turned off the write enable on the 2 int HDDs (which have always been on). all the highlighted fixes, reg edits etc didnt work.
eventually, in desperation, i opened my drivekiller (swissknife v3) and deleted the partition, and reformatted.
problem solved.
my home PC is running win2K with sp4 and most updates. currently copying all 40Gb of music MP3s in one go no probs.
all i can deduce from this is that there was some issue with the partition.
hope this helps all those who are suffering.
Update:
seems not to be the success i first thought last night. After running OK for over an hour the thing crapped out again.
I’m now starting to think its a straitforward impending drive failure. Repartitioned and reformatted again, no bad sectors etc, yet when the drive gets to about 50Gb capacity, things go to bits.
Will keep trying and if i get a resolution short of fitting a new drive i’ll let you know.
I’ve read the various solutions here and those that came up in Google searches, but I’m reluctant to start fiddling with every drive and cable. There were three things done last evening that preceeded me seeing this error message: (1) I plugged my external firewire/usb combo drive into an external USB hub rather than back into the computer’s onboard USB port; (2) I set up dual monitors, which included re-enabling my onboard video card (SiS), and (3) I let WinXP install one of those every-other-day updates. It seems whenever one of MS updates is installed, I get a new motherlode of error messages and quirky behaviors. I have found the best thing to do is not do anything! I’ve noticed a number of people say they hadn’t actually lost any data. What I will do is unplug the external drive from the external hub and plug it back into the computer to see if that makes a difference. If it does, I’ll post the result back here.
Three days ago I got that message again, but this time I was in a hurry and forgot to put the drive into a USB ramp and used the computer’s USB slot instead (which is in the front of the computer and has easy access). One of you suggested that using the same USB slot as the printer, for example, could cause problems. So since then I bought a ramp and dedicated one of the slots for my drive and since then have had no problems except three days ago.