Error Message "Delayed Write Failed"

I get the same thing on occasion. The USB connector pads in the end of your device (USB cable, Thumbdrive, external Hard Drive, etc.) are very small, and have very finicky space tolerances within the confines of the shell, and the port connector. What I've experienced is that when I plug a device in, the connection doesn't seem to get "sloppy" due to wear, but (possibly due to oxides, or even "fuzz" getting into the connector) does a kind of "make and break" dance across the contacts. The result is that my computer will signal the device as present, gone, and back again, numerous times. The cure I've found is to make sure the physical device puts NO strain on the connection, and is itself well supported on a solid surface while the data transfer is occurring.

Beyond that, I have had to use something like "Recuva" (freeware) to recover lost partitions, and specific files, when my USB hard drive has unexpectedly disconnected, resulting in corruption of the drive and its contents.

I use my USB ports constantly, but I DO wish they were designed for a more positive connection. The old RF cable connectors with the barrel AND the twist-locking external pins worked really well long term. Maybe USB ports could use something as robust as that in USB 4.0 (assuming USB is still around for a 4.0 version.)

Yours was to my mind the first right answer reading down from the top...

Older USB sticks had a "activity" LED to warn the user, do they still all have them?, I think not. Who looks at them anyway?

But anyone not using the correct procedure is really asking for trouble as you so correctly pointed out!!

GA from me.

Sorry Andy but the post that you gave a GA to was not entirly correct. You do not need to use the Safety Eject feature. Earlier versions of windows did.

You always need to give the stick a LOT of time to accept all the data.....they are Slow, slow and also still a bit slow.

The realistic speeds (tested by many magazines and the like) are far below the theoretical speeds......

Many do not realize this and pull the stick out too soon......then you get that message!!!

Which is why I always use the feature in WinXP and in earlier Windoze versions....I still use WinXP on all my modern PCs....

Changing to Vista and Win7 does not make the writing any faster......

So your post is simply wrong!!!

I'm with you, Andy. And I have had my Win7 system tell me, three times, that my external USB drives were safe to remove, only to tell me the next time I inserted them that the data were corrupted, and I must format the drives. Fortunately, I was able to use a NON-MicroSloth tool to recover the partition (no damage to the data) and NOT have to reformat the drives.

On one occasion, though, I was not near as fortunate, and lost everything on a 120GB portable drive. What a drag. WinDoze it again!

So, no matter that the system may not TELL you to use it, you certainly had best do so, or you WILL, sooner or later, suffer catastrophe!

And even after getting the all clear, don't be too certain its correct!

And back up your backups, just in case.

I use 4 different USB Hard drives, sometimes together, sometimes singly. The largest two are both 500GB, the others are 250GB.

I have about half a dozen sticks, some very old (USB 1.1 and only 32mb!!) and some newer.

I use WinXP now since 2003(?) or thereabouts......

I have never lost data using them together, now with Win98SE, I did have a few problems now and again....

A recent power off/on of the mains (buy the provider here) did blow an external power supply, but all the data was OK once I had bought a new USB housing and power supply to put it in......now that was a good test!!!

I do use good hardware though, Toshiba Laptops and a self built AMD X2 4400 thats getting a bit long in the tooth with an MSI mainboard....

All quality hardware. Maybe your hardware is letting you down and not removing the stick correctly in some manner.....only a guess though as I just said, I never get problems.....

I shall be buying a new external hard disk soon of 1.5TB.......USB 3.0 of course.....and a USB 3.0 card for my Laptop.....for total backup flexibility.

Did you try re-housing the hard disk like I did? You data may have been OK as mine was......

Rehousing the hard disk. Well, no, it's one of those sealed-in-epoxy blocks that fit in a shirt pocket. Hard to rehouse, without somehow taking it out of the block. Probably can be done, but I don't want to try.

No, I think the point I was suggesting is that possibly Win7 (which I note you did NOT say you use) may either read the result of the test implied by "safely remove ..." wrong, or my use another routine entirely that just "doesn't get it".

Don't know. Just know I have to watch it carefully.

Sorry, I forgot you were using a stick, my bad....

Have you looked on the windows 7 web forums for assistance?

Is it a "quality" stick?

Do remember that data is "Cached" by windows when writing, this means that windows says its finished, but it hasn't!! You can turn off write caching somewhere to get over this.....or there may be a better method that someone else can let you in on....you may have a big cache and a very slow stick (sounds terrible!!)

Till you have a fix, don't pull it out till you are sure (wait 5 mins!) writing has fully finished....

Andy:

You are right, a big cache (what I have, and I really don't want to turn it off for this, and back on for everything else) and a slow stick (what I have, and I'm not willing to buy the necessary to speed it up, nor to speed up my pocket hard drive, which is USB 2.0, vice 3.0) is a terrible pair to have.

So, I follow you last advice. Wait generously for writes to complete, before pulling the stick/pocket drive. More often, I leave it/them in until I'm done working, and plan to shut down anyway. Cache flush as it shuts down seems to be the most reliable solution of all.

Thanks

Your last 2 sentences is a really good solution for the problem.....

" I leave it/them in until I'm done working, and plan to shut down anyway. Cache flush as it shuts down seems to be the most reliable solution of all."

But do not forget, although a large cache does generally help performance, its actually a liability in a way as if you are unlucky enough to experience an electronic or a power failure, the data not written will be completely lost and in a worst case scenario, the data that was actually just written will still not be readable.....because its incomplete.

I actually only cache reads, I never cache writes.....seems to take longer, but its quite a bit safer....

Good point, but both of my current computers are laptops, with good robust batteries, so the power outages don't clobber me. I am planning, though, to build a tower for disk access, and either that, or another, for occasional online multimedia use and video storage. I'll keep that issue in mind when designing in cache size for that. Reads would need a sufficient cache to keep me out of the skips when the net acts up, but writes could be small, even then, as long as I am not spending too many cycles trying to write while either hitting the disks hard as a disk server, or watching a video other than the one I'm writing.

Hmm, interesting question. If I build a large read cache to watch an online video without skips, and use that same time period, hence that same cache to actually writer the movie to the disk, does that make a read cache or a write cache?

I guess it depends on whether you are speaking from the point of view of the disk server, or the video display app, huh?

Thanks, Andy. As usual, your insight improves my thinking on it. Not the cache viewpoint question, though. That's just one of my quirks.

Watch a video = read cache

Write a video to disk = write cache.....

Both are seperately set up.

you can prevent this by downloading usb safe to remove from dotnetwizard.net or simply make shure you click your icon --in windows to safely remove hard ware

Could you post a URL that exactly finds the software. I searched on the website you gave and did not find it.....or a search argument that finds it please.

you can get the software from http://safelyromove.com/download.htm

"http://safelyromove.com/download.htm"

The URL should be "http://safelyremove.com/download.htm". I went to it. FWITW, it's trialware, not free.

Didn't try using it, though.

Thanks for the link.

they used to have a freeware version and i did a search of my remote drive and usb sticks but couldn't find it.-- If I had I would have Gladly Emailed it to you.