Re: "Delayed write failed" while firewire drive is not doing anything??


Ian Wrote:
> I have a 4-bay external firewire enclosure, with Oxford Semiconductor
> 911 chipset. I have 4 drives connected (a couple of Maxtors, a Western
> Digital and a Hitachi). Every so often (many times a day) I get
> "Delayed write failed" error on one or more of the disks (usually the
> Hitachi or one of the Maxtors), even though the disk is inactive.
>
> I'm running Windows XP SP2 on a machine with an Athlon K7T266Pro
> board. I have write caching DISABLED (the disks are "optimised for
> quick removal"), so I can't see why there should be any delayed write
> activity at all, let alone when I'm not actually using the disks.
>
> I've seen alot of messages concerning the "delayed write" problem,
> particularly with XP SP2, but would be keen to understand why I get
> these errors when I'm not actually trying to write to the disks.
>
> I've tried plugging the same enclosure into a different PC (an Acer
> T120) and get exactly the same problem. This is also running XP SP2.
>
> I've seen a recommendation to change the PCI latency in the BIOS, but
> this option doesn't seem to be available in my BIOS settings.
>
> I've also run a utility from the BUSTrace site to check whether write
> packet sizes are an issue, but it didn't generate any failures.
>
> Does anyone know why I would get these errors when the disks are not
> being used??? Better still, can anyone suggest a workaround??
>
> TIA for any feedback
> Ian


Hello Ian,

I too have the exact same problems with this error. I too have a 4 bay
FW case with Oxford911 chipset based bridgeboards.

Just like you, I can get this error simply by leaving the enclosure
turned on, and not be doing ANYTHING at all on the PC.

I have tried everything, including the PCI latency thing but to no
avail. I even bought and tried the uniBrian drivers from ubiCore but
while there were no delayed write errors withe these drivers, they can
only see one drive per board.

Writing to the author of the drivers has not produced much except that
he needs a multi-bay enclosure to be able to make changes to his
driver. He has never heard of the Oxford 911 being able to support two
drives per board.

Perhaps you've run across the BusTrace site? I've tried everything
there as well.

At this point, I'm thinking of going back to Windows 2000 and see if
that helps.


--
Hartosay
.

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