I have 3 maxtor disks, one brand new, and 3 usb drive enclosures, and a couple of usb cables. Running maxtor's diag software connected directly to an ide interface with each of these drives, I get no reported errors.

But on a HDDscan (in read mode), I will see a few (under 10) errors reported. No errors are reported when doing a verify.

Running chkdisk with a scan doesn't report any errors.

When a usb drive reads a block, and it gets an error, does it re-read the block? Is the error an actual disk read error that fails a crc? Does the program use a driver that does automatic re-reads and only reports errors if some number of retries fail? Or does it return each error w/o retrying. Might some errors be transient (and normal?)

Or could it be the usb controller is the bad guy. The error reported to the event log is:

------------------------------------------------------
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk3\DR17.
-------------------------------------------------------
Then there's a hex dump, not always the same. Is there a way to decode this to see what is really happening? When these errors occurs, I can hear the drive re-seeking for a second or two. Sounds almost like when you first turn on the power.

Since I get these few errors on 3 different drives, with 3 different enclosures and 2 cables, the only common item is the usb drivers and/or usb hardware on the mother board.

Occasionally, I find that writing some large files to these usb drives will be corrupted on readback. I only use these drives via the usb enclosures to store large movie files (4-8 gigs each).

May be it were no errors, but warnings ?

That's what I'm trying to understand, if these are truly hard errors or an occasional soft, recoverable error.

I've now got a system where I can run the mhdd tool on all my disks. They run clean using the scan command.

However, they all show an error now and then running the scan tool (under windows 2000) on these drives when running attached to a usb controller under read mode.

But I think I found that one of my usb enclosures had a heat problem. The scan would run for about 5 minutes, then seem to stop, reset the drive, and get another error. Spraying some really cold air on the usb enclosure electronics, the errors all go away for a few minutes. This repeated a few times.

So, I think maybe I have one really bad enclosure, and my other 2 enclosures get an occasional, recoverable error.

I will need to experiment further, now that I am beginning to understand how to use these great tools.

if you post HDDScan report here - I will say, what the problem is

I just got some new usb enclosures, and HDDScan reports errors using the read function.

Here is a typical run:

Drive testing
Model : ST340825A
Firmware : 3.11
Serial :
LBA : 78165360
Start LBA : 0
End LBA : 78165360
Block size : 256

Block start at 1257728 time 341ms
Block start at 2281984 time 341ms
Bad block found, start LBA : 2874624
Bad block found, start LBA : 3083520
Bad block found, start LBA : 3150592
Bad block found, start LBA : 3556608
Block start at 3728640 time 331ms
Bad block found, start LBA : 3783424
Block start at 3831552 time 351ms
Bad block found, start LBA : 3894528
Paused

--------------------------------------------------------
So, I then restarted it just before these errors and got this:
--------------------------------------------------------

Drive testing
Model : ST340825A
Firmware : 3.11
Serial :
LBA : 78165360
Start LBA : 2774624
End LBA : 78165360
Block size : 256

Bad block found, start LBA : 5439072
Bad block found, start LBA : 6235232
Bad block found, start LBA : 6243168
Bad block found, start LBA : 6462560
Paused
Bad block found, start LBA : 7259488



This is what I am seeing on several drives. In each case of a bad block found, I get an error reported to the event log,

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk3\DR38.

0000: 03 04 22 00 01 00 72 00 .."...r.
0008: 00 00 00 00 0b 00 04 c0 .......À
0010: 03 01 00 00 85 01 00 c0 ....…..À
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0028: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0030: 00 00 00 00 28 00 00 00 ....(...
0038: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0040: 28 00 00 3b 6d 00 00 00 (..;m...
0048: 80 00 €.



Could it be my usb controller on my mobo is a tad flakey, or is this just a recoverable error?

rocket777,
Have you considered attaching the drives as internals to confirm their error status?

Even if you have no room, you could run the data cable and power with the case open.

You have problems with disk or with USB-to-IDE bridge chip
Windows reading function cannot read several blocks from USB device

Hi,
Please Connect the system To Normal IDe of a board and try out mhdd or something else

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Hello,

Sometimes I have problems running UDMA6 (133)capable drives in UDMA6 mode, I get reading and writing errors at various LBAs. If I set it to run in UDMA5 (100) mode, there is no problem with them at all.
I suppose the cable or the controller is not quite capable for this speed.
But I don't know how can U change the config of an USB-ata bridge.

regards,
pepe

Hello pepe,

isn't it possible to configure the HDD to use only lower HDD modes?
ISTR that IBM DFT has a function to restrict UDMA modes.
Or maybe modifying the cable so it isn't detected as 80pin, thus forcing the HDD to run at UDMA2 max.

MOW

Hi Mow,
this is possible with many brands of hdd and is not a hiden fact ,why not use different cable 40 pin connector and also use hdd utility to lower the UDMA Modes

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

I have a system setup where I can plug in my drives directly to the ide channel. I see no errors like this at all using the bootable MHDD. So, I suspect that it is my usb controller. I will try to do this same usb test on another system and see what happens.


Question: What is the difference between verify and read on the hdd scan program?

Thanks for your replies.

I've just tried it on 2 other systems. One is a laptop, one another desktop and it's interesting that all 3 show very different performance in read mode (verify seems the same, 56,000 KB/s).

system 1, original with errors: 25,000 KB/s
system 2, desktop no errors : 7,000 KB/s
system 3, laptop no errors: 14,000 KB/s

So, my fastest performer, is the one getting the errors. All 3 systems claim to be usb 2.0, and I'm connected the same hard drive in the same enclosure.

Maybe my first system is running too fast for it's own good.