USB Device : Windows delayed write failed ?

I have been using my portable hard disk drive for more than an year now. Its a laptop hard-disk of 2.5 inches, 80GB capacity with a USB 2.0 casing. By now the drive has become nearly full, there is little free space.

Three days back, I got a warning saying

“Windows delayed write failed - Windows was unable to save all the data for the file M:\$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 data elsewhere.”

For a moment I thought that disk is going faulty, but with some hit and trial, I got it fixed.

Let me share the solution with you.

Fix:

This kind of problem is observed when the drive is almost full and there is some problem being faced by the disk in maintaining the file allocation table. This problem can be fixed in some easy steps:

1. Delete some un-necessary stuff from your drive and make at-least 5% of the total disk space as free space.

2. Open My Computer, right click on the USB drive, click on properties.

3. Go to Tools > Error-checking and select option to check now as shown in the image below.

4. This will show a window like the one below. Check the check-boxes to Automatically fix the file system and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. Click Start.

NOTE: If you are not able to run this scan, disconnect the drive and try again. If the USB malfunction error is received.

This scan may take a few minutes to a few hours depending on the disk size and type of file system. Keep patience and let it complete properly. Once this is done, re-start your computer.

Source : http://www.troublefixers.com/delayed-write-failed-error-with-usb-drive/

Download Thumbscrew : USB Write Blocker

Majority of the virus problem which we receive from the readers are those cases which infect the system through pen drives. According to our records about 40 percent of the total computer systems got virus or trojan infection through pen drives and USB portable devices like iPOd, Mp3 players etc.

Yesterday, I found a cool utility called Thumbscrew : USB Write Blocker , you can use this utility to disable writing to your USB drive. You can read full review about the utility here

Let’s see how can you use this utility to protect your drive from viruses

Fix:

Thumbscrew is small handy utility which you can take any where on your pen drive use it to protect your pen drive from viruses on other computer systems by disabling Writing on that system. You can download thumbscrew here.

Follow the procedure below to protect your pen drive from viruses

1. In order to protect your pen drive from viruses you need to create a blank file named autorun.inf through notepad and place it in the root directory.

2. When you insert pen drive on any virus infected computer system it will throw a message that some thing is trying to copy and replace a file located in the root directory of your USB device and that is nothing but a virus.

Source :

http://www.troublefixers.com/disable-data-writing-on-your-usb-drive-to-protect-it-from-viruses/

Windows Shows error "Can not format the pen drive" ?

We have received many problems mentioning that they are not able to format their pen drives. Some of them have written that the pen drive capacity displayed is not correct.

When they try to format the pen drive, Windows Shows error "Can not format the pen drive". There can be more than one reasons behind such problems, some of the common problems are:

1. Virus or trojan infection.

2. Corrupted flash chips on the pen drive (hardware fault)

3. Fake pen drives ! (Many such drives are there in the markets, beware)

Lets see what to do to fix the issues.

Fix:

Virus or trojan infections:

Virus or trojans can run some process that keeps running in background. This not only harms the computer, but also prevents the pen drive from formatting as it shows that the drive is in use. Remove and re-insert the pen drive, don’t double click on drive and cancel autorun operations if it starts automatically. Run a virus scan on pen drive, this will help fix the issue. Now format the pen drive.

Always take precautions while using pen drives on other computers.

he computer detects the pen drive but data on pen drive is not visible as the pen drive is not visible in My Computer ?

You may have faced a problem when you insert your pen drive and it gets detected very easily but it doesn’t show up as a drive icon in My Computer. The computer detects the pen drive but data on pen drive is not visible as the pen drive is not visible in My Computer (Explorer).

This problem occurs mainly when windows XP fails to allocate a drive letter to your portable drive(pen drive). It occurs mostly with new pen drives connected to your computer for the first time. If you face such problem then it may not be the pen drive’s fault, rather it may be windows trouble.

Fix:

You can fix this issue by following some simple steps given below.

1. Click Start, click Run, type compmgmt.msc, and then click OK.

2. In the console tree, click Disk Management. The Disk Management window will appear.

3. On this disk management window, you can see some drives including the portable drive. Right click on your portable drive and click change drive letter and paths.

4. Now assign a new drive letter which is not being used by any of your drives in My Computer.

5. After assigning the new drive letter your portable drive will show up in my computer with other drives

We hope the above solution will help to fix this trouble.