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From: Yousuf Khan on 12 Jan 2010 10:52
Yousuf Khan wrote:
> Mark Hobley wrote:
>> Have you changed something on the system?
>> Has the harware changed?
>> Has any software been updated? (Beware of automatic updates)
>
> Actually, the only change that I made to the system is that I added a
> second external USB HD to it. It had a previous USB HD already attached
> to it before, which is still attached to it, but then I picked up a
> second one right after Boxing Day. Come to think of it, the first crash
> occurred just a couple of days after that.
>
> I'm willing to entertain the possibility that this new external drive is
> somehow to blame, but I don't see why. It's just using a standard
> Microsoft USB Mass Storage driver, and so was the previous external
> drive. I don't think it could be due to power supply issues as I
> upgraded the system's power supply early last year to a high-capacity
> Zalman 650W unit.
>
>
> Yousuf Khan

I've added the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage newsgroup too, since
it's looking like this is becoming storage-related.

First, so to summarize again, I've now had 5 BSOD crashes on one of my
systems since Christmas. The only change to my system happens to be a
new external USB hard disk that I got after Christmas. The first crash
occurred only a few days after attaching this device, on Dec 30th. The
system previously had a similar external storage enclosure which has had
no problems. They were similar, however the older drive was a 500GB
formatted in FAT32, whereas the newer drive is a 1TB formatted in NTFS.

Secondly, the most recent crash occurred right in the middle of a large
file transfer from one my internal drives to the new external drive.

This is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that something about this
drive is causing the problem. But I've also been analysing the crash
dumps, and they all implicate either the OS kernel itself, NTOSKRNL, or
the HAL.DLL driver, or the NTFS.SYS driver.

In fact the most recent BSOD was a Stop 0x24 (NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM) right on
the NTFS.SYS driver (see quote below):

> BugCheck 24, {1902fe, f78beba0, f78be89c, b83fb504}
>
> Probably caused by : Ntfs.sys ( Ntfs!NtfsDeleteCcb+84 )

So the question is, perhaps USB hard disks formatted to NTFS might not
respond fast enough to the system's liking, since NTFS usually goes on
internal hard disks. Is there some way to increase a timeout or anything
for this drive?

I always wondered why Microsoft bothered to create a new ExFAT file
system, to replace FAT32, when NTFS was already around. This might be
the answer.

Yousuf Khan
From: Arno on 12 Jan 2010 13:49
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan <bbbl67(a)spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yousuf Khan wrote:
>> Mark Hobley wrote:
>>> Have you changed something on the system?
>>> Has the harware changed?
>>> Has any software been updated? (Beware of automatic updates)
>>
>> Actually, the only change that I made to the system is that I added a
>> second external USB HD to it. It had a previous USB HD already attached
>> to it before, which is still attached to it, but then I picked up a
>> second one right after Boxing Day. Come to think of it, the first crash
>> occurred just a couple of days after that.
>>
>> I'm willing to entertain the possibility that this new external drive is
>> somehow to blame, but I don't see why. It's just using a standard
>> Microsoft USB Mass Storage driver, and so was the previous external
>> drive. I don't think it could be due to power supply issues as I
>> upgraded the system's power supply early last year to a high-capacity
>> Zalman 650W unit.
>>
>>
>> Yousuf Khan

> I've added the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage newsgroup too, since
> it's looking like this is becoming storage-related.

> First, so to summarize again, I've now had 5 BSOD crashes on one of my
> systems since Christmas. The only change to my system happens to be a
> new external USB hard disk that I got after Christmas. The first crash
> occurred only a few days after attaching this device, on Dec 30th. The
> system previously had a similar external storage enclosure which has had
> no problems. They were similar, however the older drive was a 500GB
> formatted in FAT32, whereas the newer drive is a 1TB formatted in NTFS.

> Secondly, the most recent crash occurred right in the middle of a large
> file transfer from one my internal drives to the new external drive.

Maybe you have some USB disconnects and the NTFS layer gets confused.
As NTFS flushes some data with high priority, I would imagine this can
happen.

> This is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that something about this
> drive is causing the problem. But I've also been analysing the crash
> dumps, and they all implicate either the OS kernel itself, NTOSKRNL, or
> the HAL.DLL driver, or the NTFS.SYS driver.

> In fact the most recent BSOD was a Stop 0x24 (NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM) right on
> the NTFS.SYS driver (see quote below):

>> BugCheck 24, {1902fe, f78beba0, f78be89c, b83fb504}
>>
>> Probably caused by : Ntfs.sys ( Ntfs!NtfsDeleteCcb+84 )

> So the question is, perhaps USB hard disks formatted to NTFS might not
> respond fast enough to the system's liking, since NTFS usually goes on
> internal hard disks. Is there some way to increase a timeout or anything
> for this drive?

That should not be the cause. You would need to get USB errors
to cause this behaviour and moybe you have some. It is possible
thet the FAT32 driver is more resilient, also because it is far
mor simple and NTFS is a complexity nightmare.

> I always wondered why Microsoft bothered to create a new ExFAT file
> system, to replace FAT32, when NTFS was already around. This might be
> the answer.

Indeed. Also they have ExFAT better locked down with patents
and hope that people will be stupid enough to adopt it anyways.

Arno

--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans
From: mike on 12 Jan 2010 14:02
Yousuf Khan wrote:
> Yousuf Khan wrote:
>> Mark Hobley wrote:
>>> Have you changed something on the system?
>>> Has the harware changed?
>>> Has any software been updated? (Beware of automatic updates)
>>
>> Actually, the only change that I made to the system is that I added a
>> second external USB HD to it. It had a previous USB HD already
>> attached to it before, which is still attached to it, but then I
>> picked up a second one right after Boxing Day. Come to think of it,
>> the first crash occurred just a couple of days after that.
>>
>> I'm willing to entertain the possibility that this new external drive
>> is somehow to blame, but I don't see why. It's just using a standard
>> Microsoft USB Mass Storage driver, and so was the previous external
>> drive. I don't think it could be due to power supply issues as I
>> upgraded the system's power supply early last year to a high-capacity
>> Zalman 650W unit.
>>
>>
>> Yousuf Khan
>
> I've added the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage newsgroup too, since
> it's looking like this is becoming storage-related.
>
> First, so to summarize again, I've now had 5 BSOD crashes on one of my
> systems since Christmas. The only change to my system happens to be a
> new external USB hard disk that I got after Christmas. The first crash
> occurred only a few days after attaching this device, on Dec 30th. The
> system previously had a similar external storage enclosure which has had
> no problems. They were similar, however the older drive was a 500GB
> formatted in FAT32, whereas the newer drive is a 1TB formatted in NTFS.
>
> Secondly, the most recent crash occurred right in the middle of a large
> file transfer from one my internal drives to the new external drive.
>
> This is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that something about this
> drive is causing the problem. But I've also been analysing the crash
> dumps, and they all implicate either the OS kernel itself, NTOSKRNL, or
> the HAL.DLL driver, or the NTFS.SYS driver.
>
> In fact the most recent BSOD was a Stop 0x24 (NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM) right on
> the NTFS.SYS driver (see quote below):
>
>> BugCheck 24, {1902fe, f78beba0, f78be89c, b83fb504}
>>
>> Probably caused by : Ntfs.sys ( Ntfs!NtfsDeleteCcb+84 )
>
> So the question is, perhaps USB hard disks formatted to NTFS might not
> respond fast enough to the system's liking, since NTFS usually goes on
> internal hard disks. Is there some way to increase a timeout or anything
> for this drive?
>
> I always wondered why Microsoft bothered to create a new ExFAT file
> system, to replace FAT32, when NTFS was already around. This might be
> the answer.
>
> Yousuf Khan

Don't know if any of this is relevant, but...
I started having file transfer problems when I installed vista.
Network file transfers to/from XP failed randomly, but only when the file
being transferred exceeded ~4MB and was in the middle of a multi-file
transfer. Also seemed to matter which end of the pipe initiated
the transfer.
I couldn't make a vista to vista file transfer fail.

I use totalcommander as my file manager. It has the option to use
file transfer compatibility mode, whatever that is. Doesn't fail in
that mode, so I quit looking for the problem.

I've had usb file transfer failures to external drives when using the
front-mounted ports on my dell.
Hubs are a no-no.
If I look in device manager, I see more entries for root hubs
than for controllers. Don't know exactly what this means, but
sometimes, moving the usb drive to another port helps.

Bus-powered drives are problematic, but I expect your TB drive isn't.
Power supplies that come with external drives are problematic.
Might be worth a look at the PS voltages with a scope under load.

There have been numerous complaints about recent generations of
hard drives in the 1TB range.

NTFS doesn't seem to matter on smaller drives where you can do a
direct ntfs/fat32 comparison on the same hardware.
From: Arno on 12 Jan 2010 14:41
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage mike <spamme0(a)go.com> wrote:
> Yousuf Khan wrote:
>> Yousuf Khan wrote:
>>> Mark Hobley wrote:
>>>> Have you changed something on the system?
>>>> Has the harware changed?
>>>> Has any software been updated? (Beware of automatic updates)
>>>
>>> Actually, the only change that I made to the system is that I added a
>>> second external USB HD to it. It had a previous USB HD already
>>> attached to it before, which is still attached to it, but then I
>>> picked up a second one right after Boxing Day. Come to think of it,
>>> the first crash occurred just a couple of days after that.
>>>
>>> I'm willing to entertain the possibility that this new external drive
>>> is somehow to blame, but I don't see why. It's just using a standard
>>> Microsoft USB Mass Storage driver, and so was the previous external
>>> drive. I don't think it could be due to power supply issues as I
>>> upgraded the system's power supply early last year to a high-capacity
>>> Zalman 650W unit.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yousuf Khan
>>
>> I've added the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage newsgroup too, since
>> it's looking like this is becoming storage-related.
>>
>> First, so to summarize again, I've now had 5 BSOD crashes on one of my
>> systems since Christmas. The only change to my system happens to be a
>> new external USB hard disk that I got after Christmas. The first crash
>> occurred only a few days after attaching this device, on Dec 30th. The
>> system previously had a similar external storage enclosure which has had
>> no problems. They were similar, however the older drive was a 500GB
>> formatted in FAT32, whereas the newer drive is a 1TB formatted in NTFS.
>>
>> Secondly, the most recent crash occurred right in the middle of a large
>> file transfer from one my internal drives to the new external drive.
>>
>> This is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that something about this
>> drive is causing the problem. But I've also been analysing the crash
>> dumps, and they all implicate either the OS kernel itself, NTOSKRNL, or
>> the HAL.DLL driver, or the NTFS.SYS driver.
>>
>> In fact the most recent BSOD was a Stop 0x24 (NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM) right on
>> the NTFS.SYS driver (see quote below):
>>
>>> BugCheck 24, {1902fe, f78beba0, f78be89c, b83fb504}
>>>
>>> Probably caused by : Ntfs.sys ( Ntfs!NtfsDeleteCcb+84 )
>>
>> So the question is, perhaps USB hard disks formatted to NTFS might not
>> respond fast enough to the system's liking, since NTFS usually goes on
>> internal hard disks. Is there some way to increase a timeout or anything
>> for this drive?
>>
>> I always wondered why Microsoft bothered to create a new ExFAT file
>> system, to replace FAT32, when NTFS was already around. This might be
>> the answer.
>>
>> Yousuf Khan

> Don't know if any of this is relevant, but...
> I started having file transfer problems when I installed vista.
> Network file transfers to/from XP failed randomly, but only when the file
> being transferred exceeded ~4MB and was in the middle of a multi-file
> transfer. Also seemed to matter which end of the pipe initiated
> the transfer.
> I couldn't make a vista to vista file transfer fail.

> I use totalcommander as my file manager. It has the option to use
> file transfer compatibility mode, whatever that is. Doesn't fail in
> that mode, so I quit looking for the problem.

> I've had usb file transfer failures to external drives when using the
> front-mounted ports on my dell.
> Hubs are a no-no.

I find this surprising. I have both used long USB cables
(5m) and USB hubs to transfer large volumes of data.
However that was with Linux, it is possible that Windows
vista / 7 has a very low resilience to USB errors. Linux
does up to 4 (I think) retries and bus reset on disk access
errors, whether it is (S)ATA or USB. If vista / 7 fails
the transfer directly after any error, that would explain
the ibserved behaviour. Long cables and USB hubs make
errors more likely.

> If I look in device manager, I see more entries for root hubs
> than for controllers. Don't know exactly what this means, but
> sometimes, moving the usb drive to another port helps.

That means that there are "virual hubs".

> Bus-powered drives are problematic, but I expect your TB drive isn't.

Again, depends. They have a tendency to cause more transfer
errors, but not to unusability, at least not with Linux.

> Power supplies that come with external drives are problematic.
> Might be worth a look at the PS voltages with a scope under load.

I agree. However I did the scope test with one that caused one
specific drive to have problems and I did see nothing with
a 10MHz 10mV/div (elCheapo, I know) scope. I also played around
a bit with one of these PSUs and it seems some have very little
stability margin.

> There have been numerous complaints about recent generations of
> hard drives in the 1TB range.

Oh? I have several Samsungs and WDs and no issues. I don't
remember reading more about these or other 1TB drives. Do
you have specifics?

> NTFS doesn't seem to matter on smaller drives where you can do a
> direct ntfs/fat32 comparison on the same hardware.

So far the advantage I see for NTFS is extended attributes,
i.e. per user permissions. For a single-user machine and
for external drives this is rather irrelevant.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans
From: Yousuf Khan on 12 Jan 2010 18:19
mike wrote:
> Don't know if any of this is relevant, but...
> I started having file transfer problems when I installed vista.
> Network file transfers to/from XP failed randomly, but only when the file
> being transferred exceeded ~4MB and was in the middle of a multi-file
> transfer. Also seemed to matter which end of the pipe initiated
> the transfer.
> I couldn't make a vista to vista file transfer fail.

Weird. There's apparently a new networking paradigm with Vista and 7
than there was for XP. You need to enable some kind of compatibility
mode to make it work with XP.

> I've had usb file transfer failures to external drives when using the
> front-mounted ports on my dell.
> Hubs are a no-no.

Good point, I just plugged the drives into whatever free ports were
available at the time without much thought. I just now traced them all,
and it looks like the drive was plugged into a hub -- actually both
external drives were plugged into the same hub! I've now rearranged some
wires and put them directly on their own motherboard ports. Let's see if
that helps out.


Yousuf Khan
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