AVI Playback Problem on External USB 2.0 HDD

[interid121]

I get a "Delayed Write Failed" message almost every time I play an AVI file. After which the movie & the drive would freeze and I have to power cycle the external HDD for it to work again. It usually takes place about an hour or so into playback, or if I'm jumping around in the movie trying to find a scene, it could happen immediately or after a number of tries. It happens w/ all format of AVI, be it Xvid or Divx, and with all players I've tried. But Mpg files are not affected by this issue.

I've read the KBs in Microsoft's website regarding this problem and have tried their suggested solutions to no avail. Write caching on disk is disabled. However, after upgrading my RAM from 1GB to 2GB, it did take longer before this problem would occur.

The external HDD does otherwise function normally. I've backed up my entire computer onto it; copied AVI files to and from it; and performed just about every task you would w/ a HDD without issue. I'm not sure if this problem can actually be solved. But I'd at least like to know why it happens.

Both my C: drive and the external drive is formatted with NTFS. & the external drive is a Western Digital WD20 200GB unit. The drive enclosure is a generic unit operating w/ USB 2.0 connection.

[Soopafresh]

Have you defragged ? Use Jkdefrag (google for it). Free and really good. Not likely your problem, however.

Also, your Avi Splitter (the software piece which sends the sound to audio processing and the image to video processing) is probably sub par. You can use Haali video splitter http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/MatroskaSplitter.exe and choose support for AVI files as you go through the install procedure.

Also, try this little Avi Reindexing Script which will help a lot if the file needs it. Place AVI in same folder and doubleclick Reindex.bat to run. Source file isn't changed. Try it on a file which you know is messing up. Note - No spaces in your AVI file name -

Bad: This Is My.AVI
Good: This_Is_My.AVI

http://www.bestsharing.com/files/ovFPPq227274/Reindex.zip.html