Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "John Moody" 
<moodymz3@y...> wrote:
> Just a note on firewire drives for Windows users.
> I thought they were the best things since sliced bread.  I have 
1550 Gigs of
> them on my machine.
> I read and write a lot of data to them, a staggering amount some 
might say.
> 
> Here is the problem.  On windows, the data goes through windows 
drivers to
> handle the firewire ports.  For some reason, that allows for a rare 
but
> crippling corruption of the drive.  I have suffered 4 total 
corruptions of
> the firewire drives, and came to this conclusion after discussion 
with a
> level-2 engineer from a "famous" drive manufacturer.  I have had no 
such
> corruptions with internal drives, and I write even more data to 
them, 250
> Gig per day is not unusual.
> 
> This is just my experience, I'm not a computer hardware engineer so 
take the
> information as you see fit.
> 
> Best regards,
> John Moody


Thanks, John,

I have been using external hard drives for some while and have had 
failures with and without the "delayed write failure" messages.  I 
had another PC built on XP, the former was on 2k, and have crammed as 
many hard disks in as I can.  I have backups on at least two HDDs 
and, for archived files on CD or DVD.  I no longer buy HDDs in sizes 
greater than 80 Gb, though I have some of 120 Gb from before, because 
of the time traken to back up from CD.  I also buy Western Digital 
drives in pairs of the same manufacture date as the drives change 
circuit boards every few months and so I have a spare board if needs 
be.  

Yesterday an external dive on the 2k machine was corrupted.  I had 
backups on two HDDs.  I used the internal spare on the XP machine and 
xcopy'd the file ascross.  

My external drives on the XP machine are only switched on when in 
use, and then disconnected properly. I did not realize what the cause 
was, so, following your tip, I plan to buy another IDE PCI card for 
the XP machine and run external drives from its cable terminals but 
with power supplied externally.

Thanks,

Colin