Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

Thanks. Stunning how hard it is to find on the Dell web site!

 

Hi all,

Since my fresh install of Windows 7 x64, I've been having erratic freezing when trying to access my external USB hard drives. The Windows Explorer window sometimes shows the top level of folders, sometimes it gets as far as the second level of folders. But then the window goes into 'not responding' mode and hangs. I'm getting lots of Error 51: 'An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\DR4 during a paging operation' and Error 57: 'The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.'

The drives are totally fine, as once every 10 or 15 attempts, they work completely as expected. I've tried using different cables, disconnecting/disabling other USB devices, etc but can't find any pattern to why it works sometimes.

I still have Vista x64 on my old primary hard drive and when I boot up of that the drives work fine. Read/write of large files a breeze (as expected).

That leads me to believe that there is nothing wrong with the drives themselves, the partitions, file system, files, etc. The physical laptop (M6400) is probably fine too, as are the cables. It's happening on different types of external hard drives and I've update their BIOS/ROM where applicable.

The only thing that I can think of remaining are the drivers that Windows 7 is using. It happened after a generic install (i.e. no DELL drivers) but is also happening after I've updated drivers from the DELL site.

The problem I have is:
- I don't really know if the system is actually using the DELL drivers (or auto-repairing the Microsoft ones),
- I don't know which of the 15 or so items listed under Universal Serial Bus controllers in Device Manager I should try to update manually,
- which drivers from DELL I should install (some M6400 Windows 7 x64 drivers are apparently missing, so the recommendation is to install the relevant Vista x64 drivers, or even the M6500 ones?)
- is the order in which I install them important?

Any ideas/suggestions/experiences/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks for getting this far...

Cheers,
Ben

 

Wish I had a better answer, but... This may be a Win7 problem. I get the same errors, but my drives are fine. File transfers to any external device, be it USB, Firewire400, eSATA, or FW800 / USB 3.0 via express card are all grossly slow compared to the spec. On top of that, with FW400 and 800, moving or copying large files (the image of my boot drive is 25GB) seemingly will never complete. I have researched this to the ends of the internet with no lock. I have resolved myself to accepting the face the eSATA, running at roughly 80MBPS is the best I am going to do with Win7.

There are a few tweaks you can try..

1. Go into the deviceproperties for your hdd (via device manager) and go to the Policies tab. From here you can check the Turn off windows write cache buffer. I have noticed some improvement with the errors in the event viewer. Be warned that power loss could cause data loss, and you have to use the safely remove hardware small icon in your task bar to make sure al data haas been written.

2. Control Panel - Programs and Features - Turn Windows features on / off. Turn off remote differential compression. This is a synch feature to minimize the amount of data you transfer when synching. not a necessary feature.

Other than that, I have found NADA.. If you find another answer to your problem. please post it and I will do the same.

 

not just me then!

I use Acronis true image and it doesn't ever complete any external drive operations now!, worked fine under xp.

Come on MS external disk access is kinda the basics!

 

Try an eSATA drive. It should work, though a little slow. I create an image using acronis and save that imave on the secondary internal hdd. Then I copy that off to an external drive. Hope this helps.

 

exacly what i have done, got a 320gb sat on my desk!

edit:

installed and worked!, backup took about 15minutes! (70gb image)

just one question, both my internal 320gb drives only show 300gb each! seem to have lost 20gb each!, any ideas?

 

Long answer, It's a math thing. Manufacturers use 1000 MB as the standard by which Gigabytes are measured. OS manufacturers call a GB 1024 MB. So... If you do the math, Windows will show a 320GB hdd as just over 300.

Short answer, this is normal

 

of course! should have realised that!

 

It's really false advertising if any kind of weight/measure regulations are applied tho. Sort of like selling a three liter gallon. The average person figuring price per gig is getting screwed and confused. And with a good SLC SSD as much 12 bucks a gig it adds up. Losing 4 gigs on a 64GB drive is no disaster but my price conscience side (small but it's there) screams foul. The rest of me doesn't give a rats @ss tho.
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Precision Covet | QX9300 | 4GB 1066 | 64GB Samsung SLC SSD & 320GB Seagate | XP Pro 32bit & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

 

Hi Howi,

I use Acronis True Image as well, the procedure that I use is; I will plug the
new HHD or SSD into my laptop and reformate the drive making sure the drive
is being formatted in NTFS. I have never had a Problem with my drives,
fallowing this procedure.

I hope this helps