External Harddrive Problems....

[kfitting]

After reading mouser's review a long time ago I decided that I wanted to get an external enclosure and harddrive to make my own external drive.  Just yesterday I recieved my enclosure (USB 2.0) and Western Digital (80gig, 8mb cache, 7200 rpm Caviar) harddrive in the mail.  I plugged it in and copied ~8gig in half an hour.  All was going smooth... until I tried reading from the drive.  I got an I/O error.  After further playing around there are certain files that cause the I/O error, but ONLY on reading from the drive! To make things weirder, while I'm attempting to read the file that gives the I/O problem, I can read and write other files.  I get most of my problems trying to open avi files from the external harddrive.  If I copy them to my internal harddrive they play no problem.  I set the external drive to master, but what is the internal drive supposed to be set to?  Other than this setting, I dont think I have a hardware problem.  Is there some software setting I could tweak?  Any ideas?  If you need more info, let me know.

Kevin

[mouser]

i can give comment a little though i don't have a perfect solution.

first, your setup sounds good.
the only troubles i have ever had with external hard drives were when using drives > 160gb.
you are using usb2 and a reasonable hard drive so you should NOT be having any troubles.
and i have used quite a few no name enclosures and lots of different hard drives, and i've not had any troubles, so what you are experiencing is not normal.

setting external drive to master sounds right - and it really should not matter what your internal drives i don't think.

the ideal thing would be if you could test the hard drive inside your computer to identify whether the issue is with the hard drive or enclosure; that would be my first recommendation to try if you can.

i happen to have a spare usb enclosure, i could send it to you to test if you send it back afterwards.
but again the easiest first test might be to install the hd internally and see if the problems persist.

maybe someone has better familiarity with hds can help more.

don't give up, i love my external hd - it's a joy to have.

[nudone]

master is the correct setting.

might sound daft but is the external drive recognised as a usb 2 device, i know you'll encounter problems if it's only working as a usb 1 device.

as for your video files, well, the bandwidth might not be up to it if you are trying to play certain types. can't honestly remember now but i know i've had random problems with things like that (might have been DV).

could it be that the external drive is losing connection? you might find plugging it into another port will help. again, i can't fully remember but i know i had to mess around trying all combinations to get a few external drives working - on other occasions they just work no matter how you plug them in.

i definitely try mouser's suggestion of sticking the hard drive into your machine - internally. also definitely try plugging it into different usb ports.

if you are using a usb hub try excluding that. and if you aren't using one then try one with it's own power supply.

i don't really know any technical solutions other than just trying to mix and match. probably a good idea to try the external drive on someone else's machine if you can.

[kfitting]

Some decent suggestions... the only problem is I'm using a laptop.  I may be able to try sticking the drive in the old desktop I havent used in a while.  nudone, your point about the video is a good one especially since avi's give the most trouble.  wmv and mpeg work.  The only problem is that once I get the I/O error on a file it's corrupt and I have to delete it (it does delete fine so maybe it's not corrupt, I dont know).  Honestly I can live with not playing video files from the drive, I'm just concerned that I wont know which files wont until it's too late!

mouser, yes, I heartily agree that the external drives are sweet.  I'm trying everything I can with this one... the fact that it works most of the time gives me hope!  I'll keep your offer in mind, though at ~$18 a pop, buying a new enclosure isnt out of the question (especially since I will probably expand to multiple external drive backups at some point anyway).  Thanks, and any more ideas are welcome.  If I get time tonight I'll try some different configs.  Oh, and the USB 2 thing... I'm assuming it's recognizing as USB 2 due to the speed involved, however, where would I be certain of that?  In device manager?  Thanks,

Kevin

[mouser]

here's a question:
are you saying that you can copy the file from the external drive to internal, and it works,
and the only trouble is if you *play* it from the external drive then you get the error?

or do you get errors trying to read those files on the external drive no matter what, whether playing or copying.

[kfitting]

*most* of the time it's only when trying to view the files from the external drive.  I dont think it happens when just copying from external to internal (though once I get the I/O error on a file it appears to be corrupted), I havent tested it enough to be sure, but it seems to happen only when viewing.  It did happen once when I tried to view pictures from the drive.  I was using an image viewer similar to windows viewer (brings up the picture and allows you to flip through all pics in folder) and after a few pictures it gave the I/O error. 

Kevin

[nudone]

the speed thing sounds right to be honest - it would be painfully obvious if it was transferring stuff at usb 1 speed.

if it's just the video files that are the problem then it sounds like a bandwidth problem or access speed problem - i don't really know what i'm talking about.

the files that you say are corrupt - does it still say they are corrupt after rebooting the laptop and restarting the external drive? i wouldn't be surprised if there is nothing wrong with them.

all these sort of problems sound kind of familiar but it's that long ago i can't be more helpful as to what the problem or the solution was.

have you used the laptop with many other usb devices? the fault might not be the external drive at all???

[mouser]

given your description i dont think its a bandwidth issue,
and i think you are very right to expend whatever effort is required to solve this problem.

my lesson with hds is that these kinds of issues are like god's way of telling you to prepare for a major hd disaster.

its highly likely that this issue will eventually end up corrupting your entire external hd master boot record.
so backup anything you have on their that is irreplacable and continue your efforts to diagnose and fix the problem.

[mouser]

it wouldnt surprise me terribly if it were a hardware problem, either with hd or enclosure.
first job is figure out which one.

[kfitting]

heh heh, just got the drive yesterday and was playing around BEFORE backing stuff up.  The only files I have on it are the ones I'm testing with!  I'm going to try what Nudone said about seeing if the corruption is actually there or if it's just something screwy that a reboot will fix.  USB is working fine on my machine: keyboard, mouse, joystick, digital camera, internet, mp3 player upload, two hubs... seems to work!  I was thinking about trying to disconnect as much as possible and see if that had any effect on things.  Worth a shot!

Kevin

[mouser]

hubs can definitely cause issues.
*definitely* first thing to try is to connect it directly without a hub.

[kfitting]

Already tried both... that was my first thought.  Like I said, I'll probably try disconnecting as much as possible and see if there is a conflict.

Kevin

[kfitting]

Well, I tried rebooting my machine and all that.  Still no joy.  I sent an email to the enclosure company (Koutech) to see if they had any ideas.  I'm not going to try anything more tonight (i have other things to do.... other than computers??), but I'll get some time this weekend to try the drive internally and such.

Kevin

[kfitting]

Well... bad news and good news.  First, the bad news: my external drive still doesnt work.  Now, the good news: it appears the enclosure is bad.  I took the drive out and put it as slave in my old desktop and it worked like a charm.  I even copied the same files I had been having problems with over to it and played them (via cat5 network).  Then I tried the external enclosure with said drive on my roomates' machine... no go.  I'm relieved!  I dont mind buying another enclosure, I just didnt want to have to buy another hard drive (saving money is a good thing!).  I have already had email contact with the enclosure manufacturer, so I'll tell them what happened.  Thanks for the help... hopefully I wont have to post in another week saying I'm still having trouble!!

Kevin

[mouser]

glad to hear you isolated the problem.
my current enclosures are bytecc. they seem to work well and have an exposed front suitable for external dvds, etc. should you want to do that.

[kfitting]

Thanks for the advice... went to NewEgg and ordered a bytecc 3.5" enclosure.  Hopefully this one works! 

Kevin

[mouser]

newegg rocks.
though i always buy 5.25 so i can mount removable drives like dvd etc
but if you know its only for a hd then a nice slim 3.5 would be nice.
and has you say they are cheap.