"Windows Delayed Write Failure"

Post by **Mike Jackson** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:11 pm

Hi gang,
I am sitting here doing some back ups and restores from losing a 300 gig drive a few days ago. I think I had most of it backed up on another drive, but I'll have to wait and see, plus hope for the best. It was filled with photos from the past year or so.

A while back, I was getting some Windows Delayed Write Failure notices on my drive L. It went down not long afterwards. I started getting the same thing the other day, and that drive failed. I noticed my system was crashing more during those times, so when the drives start shutting down, it seems to affect the stability of the rest of the system. I am in the process of offloading files from drive H, after seeing the failure notice twice on that one (but not as often). For the record, these are Maxtor drives, purchased from the local Staples store. I've heard "rumors" of them being less dependable than some other brands, so I am beginning to switch to Seagate drives.

Whatever the case, this is just a quick reminder that it is not IF a drive will fail, but when! I am just hoping I didn't lose much.

Best regards,
Mike Jackson

Doug Bernhardt · Post by **Doug Bernhardt** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 8:36 pm

and timely it is. Was just getting ready to get a back-up drive for my machine. It also is getting filled with images and such.

Post by **Mike Jackson** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:01 am

Hi Doug,
Lately, I have been downloading my images off my cards into a folder or two on my "photos" hard drive. I go through them and delete all the ones I know I will never use again, or delete all but one of the same shot taken in a four or five shot burst. Once I get the folders trimmed to only the best shots, I make a copy onto DVD of the recent shoots. Once backed to the DVDs, I am okay with formatting the CF cards and reusing them, but afterwards I like to get the files backed up to a second hard drive ASAP. There might have been a few files one the failed hard drive that didn't make it to a back up hard drive, but more than likely I at least have them on a DVD. It might take months to discover I am missing a group of shots.

I was doing fairly well with everything until my photos wouldn't fit onto a single 300 gig drive. It was easy to just duplicate the first drive over to the second drive. After that, I had similar folders on several drives and it was becoming a headache. The RAW images taken on the D200 cameras are 15 megs each, so they add up quickly. I have 50 gigs of CF cards, so it is easy to fill up a hard drive.

Mike