Problems with large (1 Tb) USB backup drives on older computers

[Toastie]

Been having trouble with a couple different large (1 Tb or 1,5 Tb) USB backup drives on several older computers 2002 vintage).

If I plug one of these drives into one of my computers they are recognized for a while, but then eventually go offline - lots of dire error messages, the drive is not seen by the operating system, etc. Its as thought the drive has crashed, but it hasn't. If I reboot the drive is fine for a while again.

I am sure its not really problem with a bad drive as I have been seeing this with a couple different large size USB backup drives on a couple of my older computers. I'm sure its some limitation of the computers. One has W2K and the other XP (all up to date, latest service packs, etc).

These problems start when there is more than about 430 GB on one of these drives, things are stable when there is less than that much data on the drives.

What do you think the issue is? Is it the bios, a memory limitation, can these computers only see so much data before nt being able to keep tract of it all.

I remember when I got a 250 GB internal drive I needed to upgrade the bios on one of these machines, because it was only recognizing it s a 160 GB drive. So obviously there can be some limitations in relation to recognizing and using backup drives over a certain size.

Do you think it would be helpful to use Partition Magic to split the 1 Tb drives into several smaller partitions? I never thought if that before and am not sure you can do that to a USB drive. Can you? Would that not help as there is still a total of 1 Tb being seen over that USB connection?

Hope these are not dumb questions. Any advice would be appreciated.



Thanks!

[citanool]

Could try a manual windows update, computer manufacturer or motherboard website for updates, and USB card driver updates if applicable. USB cards can have problems in certain PCI slots and being overloaded with peripherals. Also check that drives are getting good external power from a source that isn't overloaded.

[Toastie]

Thanks -

These two computers are from about 2002, so I was thinking of partitioning the USB backup drives into smaller (~300 GB partitions) - does that sound like a potential work-around?

Can you partition a USB drive, or is that only possible to do to an IDE internal??

[misterbill]

Can you partition a USB drive, or is that only possible to do to an IDE internal??

Yes you can partition a USB drive.

[edDV]

If these machines are networked, you can access the full drive as a mapped network drive with no problems. Much faster than a USB 1.1 connection.

[redwudz]

I didn't see it mentioned, but I assume you have add-on USB 2.0 cards in those older computers? USB 1.1 might have difficultly with large drives. (Besides being really slow. )

You could try partitioning one of the drives, but the problem may be with other programs on the computer. Do you have any virus/anti-malware programs or similar that may be trying to scan the drives? And do you have other USB peripherals on the USB interface? The USB interface can get bogged down from other USB devices like keyboards or a mouse, or sometimes just from the OS scanning the drive or stealing CPU cycles away from the USB controller.

You might want to watch the CPU and RAM usage as you access the drive and see if there are any indications there.

And is one of your 'warning' messages something like "Delayed write failed'? If so, than can corrupt your drive.

[Toastie]

Thanks for the advice!

[yoda313]

Just another thought here - could your power supply be overworked? I don't know how that would apply to a usb drive. But my thinking might possbily be if your maxed out on power could there not be enough juice to keep the usb drives lit up? Or are these standalone usb drives with external power sources?

[Toastie]

Just another thought here - could your power supply be overworked? I don't know how that would apply to a usb drive. But my thinking might possbily be if your maxed out on power could there not be enough juice to keep the usb drives lit up? Or are these standalone usb drives with external power sources?

These are stand alones with their own wall wart power supplies.

[RabidDog]

Is your older PC sending/allowing the Drives to go into Powersaving mode? EG drive goes to sleep and PC doesnt know how to wake it up again? Maybe set all powersaving options off, on both the Pc and The Usb drive. Also are these drives Fat32? It could be that some bios (or windows) will only recognize the first 137gb of the drive (windows XP no SP) .As others have said uSB1.1 must be impossibly slow, with a drive of this size.
Winme and NT (various) may also have this problem.

[Ozzyjim]

Gday,

I have a WD 1TB Ext drive that I use with this laptop with no problems, As long as I do not use my external (powered) hub. It turns out the hub is usb 1.1 and has major problems with this drive. Are theese drives internal drives that you have put into external cases?, there can be problems with large drives in external cases as the IDE/SATA controller in the case will not recognise them properly.

James.