$Mft error, Delayed Write Failed
I have been experiencing some odd behavior lately on my ThinkPad laptop. Some functions are normal and work well, but in particular file copying and transferring files is troublesome.
I have remote control of the laptop through gotomypc. I am trying to copy a set of files to an external drive. The file set is composed of about 1,500 files, and totals about 3GB in size. The local harddrive and the external drive have plenty of free space.
I was experiencing some lethargic response to my commands, but things would eventually start to respond. then I was receiving I/O errors that particualr files wouldn't copy over.
Also, I was trying to transfer files from my office computer to the laptop (approx. 300MB, so should have taken 1 hour). The file transfers would start normally, then fail at some point in the transfer.
Now same lethargic responses, and what seems a more significant error.
..."Windows-Delayed Write failed. Windows was unable to save all of the data for the file W:\$Mft 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"
W:\ is the assigned drive letter for the external drive, but in this case I was trying to copy the files to an alternative location on the C:\ drive just as an alternative. this command hung for approximately 5 minutes, then this erro again. It seems like the laptop is incapable of accurately copying files?
-mft-error.doc
I have remote control of the laptop through gotomypc. I am trying to copy a set of files to an external drive. The file set is composed of about 1,500 files, and totals about 3GB in size. The local harddrive and the external drive have plenty of free space.
I was experiencing some lethargic response to my commands, but things would eventually start to respond. then I was receiving I/O errors that particualr files wouldn't copy over.
Also, I was trying to transfer files from my office computer to the laptop (approx. 300MB, so should have taken 1 hour). The file transfers would start normally, then fail at some point in the transfer.
Now same lethargic responses, and what seems a more significant error.
..."Windows-Delayed Write failed. Windows was unable to save all of the data for the file W:\$Mft 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"
W:\ is the assigned drive letter for the external drive, but in this case I was trying to copy the files to an alternative location on the C:\ drive just as an alternative. this command hung for approximately 5 minutes, then this erro again. It seems like the laptop is incapable of accurately copying files?
-mft-error.doc
mgonullu
Is your external Drive FAT or NTFS? sometimes FAT males problem for large files
ASKER
I'm guessing FAT, since it hasn't been reformatted since it was shipped. Any particular file size that it starts to choke on?
You have to format and make it NTFS
You should just run: CONVERT W: /FS:NTFS
This will change your drive from FAT32 to NTFS.
Also, when copying a large number of files, or large sized files, use this app:
http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php
The error recovery will help you out and the way it skips files instead of killing the whole job will speed things up for you. You can then go back and look at just the failed files to try to figure out why they wouldn't copy.
This will change your drive from FAT32 to NTFS.
Also, when copying a large number of files, or large sized files, use this app:
http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php
The error recovery will help you out and the way it skips files instead of killing the whole job will speed things up for you. You can then go back and look at just the failed files to try to figure out why they wouldn't copy.
ASKER
albgrana...The feature to turn off cached writing is greyed out in drive properties. It is an IBM ThinkPad and they seem to liek to control alot through the ThinkVantage utilities. any idea if this is where I need to turn it off, and how?
Well,
check in your BIOS Setup if disk write cache is enabled.
check in your BIOS Setup if disk write cache is enabled.
ASKER
thanks for your help folks. I'm gonna continue some maintenance on it. So far, my biggest problem is tha the same errors/problems aren't presenting themselves each time. It appears that I can open "My Computer" once or twice upon reboot, then it starts to get unresponsive. I can't run Disk Clean-up, but I can run disk defragmenter (it reported it was severeley fragmented...one of the first times I've seen that on a 2-year old computer). It's frustrating to have a computer respond like this, when it works so well and fast on other tasks, but it seems something is wrong at the core of the unit...OS?, harddrive?, undetected malware?, corrupt installation of something? at some point, it may be smartest to give it a fresh start.
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