It's interesting that bruno71 (in the related question) came to the conclusion that FW800 just doesn't work well on Server 2003 or XP. I'm hoping I won't have to give up and come to that conclusion myself. bruno71's problem is exactly what I'm encountering - disk disappears as a device. I suspect that "delayed-write failure" underlies bruno71's problem.
SETUP
System: Toshiba Satellite P100 laptop, 2x2.0GHz, 2Gb RAM, XP Pro SP3
Ext drive: Formac Maxi 320Gb, in a FW800/USB enclosure. (Disk is actually a Hitachi T7K500 inside the box).
Interface: Sonnet FW800 Expresscard. Unibrain 5.5.0 drivers.
ERROR
(A) Using the Unibrain drivers:
- Disk and interface card recognised OK by XP. Drive appears both as "SBP2 compliant device", as a disk drive, and as E:\ in Explorer. Immediate FTDISK warnings in the Sys Event log when drive is connected (usually 5 of them): Event ID 57 The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.
Disk remains available and operational, so far.
- Disk tools (FORMAT, CHKDSK, DEFRAG, or their Disk Management equivalents) fail within 20 seconds. Sometimes a "delayed-write failure" popup, but always accompanied by Event ID 57 (which seems to come in packs of 5) in Sys Event Log. Drive disappears as a device in the system. Can be re-detected if switched off and back on.
- Physical disk itself is healthy. This is proved by connecting through USB - which was the only way I managed to format it (NTFS, 16k sector size). Disk is proven healthy by CHKDSK with all the options enabled (connected through USB), even after the more extensive errors described below.
- Test: Attempt to copy a large group of files (800Mb) from E:\ (external FW) to C:\ (internal). Copy proceeds extremely fast, gets to 250Mb approx, and then fails with "Delayed write failed", multiple Event ID 57s, and drive disappearing. Also produces multiple Event ID 50s from NTFS: {Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file . The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.
Sometimes this test also produces a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death): Error code 1000008e, parameter1 80000003, parameter2 804e2a42, parameter3 80557304, parameter4 00000000. This doesn't, unfortunately, specify where the error occurred (if it showed UBSBP2.SYS, which is Unibrain's SBP2 driver, things would be a little clearer). MS's comment on this error report is that a device driver has produced an unhandled exception.
- Test: Attempt to copy a large group of files (800Mb) from C:\ (internal) to E:\ (external FW). Writing to the disk seems to produce the same symptoms as reading (test above), but more quickly.
(B) Using the MS drivers.
Same as above, but handled execrably! In every situation where the Unibrain drivers produce an error and shut down the device, the MS drivers cause a total system hang - hard reboot needed. Apart from this - I severely doubt that MS drivers are capable of 800Mbs speeds.
(C) Connecting through USB
No problems whatsoever. However, this is not an acceptable workaround, as I specifically bought this disk (and card) for heavy audio recording/editing work in the future. If I was looking for a USB drive solution, I could have spent GBP100 less.
(D) Connecting through the laptop's built-in FW400 port (disabled in all previous tests) - using Unibrain drivers again
Generally stable operation. Occasional errors of the kind described above, when disk is under stress. No BSODs. This connection is to a different socket (6-pin FW) on the disk enclosure, so it MAY be going through a different chipset inside the enclosure. Most significant, to me, is that it's only trying to address the disk as 400Mbs.
ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE PROBLEM (none successful)
a) Tried two other FW800 cables, one Nikkai and one Belkin.
b) Tried using the MS drivers - as suggested by Sonnet tech support - same errors, but unhandled, as described above.
c) Applied the fixes in MS KB 885222 and 885464.
d) Upgraded to SP3 (problems originally occurred on SP2).
e) Disabled write-caching on the drive (through Drive Properties)
f) Increased the disk-cache size using the Cacheman utility, selecting the "Maximise throughput for file-sharing" setting.
g) Contacted Formac and Sonnet tech support; they're unable to solve the problem.
THINGS I MIGHT TRY
a) Disabling this device, which shares IRQ 18 with the FW800 card:
IRQ 18 Shared Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27CA
(since I have 4 of these: 27C8, 27C9, 27CA, 27CB, I believe they correspond to the 4 USB connections on the laptop. I can do without one.)
b) Manual IRQ setting is not possible, as the machine runs ACPI and disables this.
CONCLUSION
Sonnet tech support say they're getting a lot of calls about instability problems with this card - interestingly, both from Win and Mac users. They don't know at this point what the problem is, and suggest I return the card and get one from a different manufacturer.
However, FW800 under Windows seems to be an "abandon all hope/you're on your own here" zone. No-one seems to have satisfactorily resolved this issue - and I say this after 10 days of googling. I have a suspicion that another FW800 card will be just as problematic. My choices are:
- Siig: 2-port 9-pin card not available in the UK. Known issues with pro-audio gear.
- Belkin: panned on Amazon.com, with users reporting serious errors similar to mine.
- LaCie: very little information on this one. Does use the TI chipset (essential for MOTU audio gear). No reply so far to my email to their sales team.
QUESTIONS:
a) Has anyone, anywhere, ever got FW800 disks to work reliably under XP? On a laptop (i.e. Expresscard interface)?
b) Is there anything I might try that I haven't tried already?
c) Is it worth trying a different FW800 card?
d) Or might it be better to hang on to the Sonnet card (the company has a good reputation in the audio world - but seems to supply more to Mac users), and pressure them/Unibrain to sort out the problems, in time?
e) Or is FW800 under Windows just dead in the water, due to something inherent in the OS itself? If so, is MS every likely to resolve this? (I've heard that SP3 is the end of the line for XP - from now on, it's all Vista).
This is a hard one!
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