Maxtor 250GB external FIREWIRE drive is READ ONLY

[raybattersby]

A Dell Inspiron 2500 running WIndows XP Home is fitted with a Swann Traveller firewire card connected to a MAXTOR 5000XT 250GB external hard drive.

The device is recognised by MS Explorer and reads/writes OK using the USB port (but less than 1mB/sec transfer speed so no good for DV use).

Using the Firewire ports, copying files to the disk using MS Explorer displays an error message "Cannot copy [filename]: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"

When Pinnacle v7 tests the drive for speed it displays the message "The path 'F:\' is read only"

I have changed the Maxtor for a new one (same result) and changed the Swann Firewire Card for a new one (same result).

The Maxtor drive works OK (but transfer is a lot lower than the 37.5Mb/sec specified by Maxtor) when connected to a Dell XPS Dimension T700r running Win98SE fitted with a Belkin Firewire PCI card.

System/Hardware reports all devices are working properly - Firewire card, PCMCIA, Maxtor drive. Neither Swann nor Maxtor have any later drivers.

This points to an XP or Dell Inspiron problem I think.

Any ideas folks?

 

[Jontmke]

What OS are you using? Is the drive shared? Check the user rights to the share. This sounds like an access rights issue. A hard drive does not care what writes to it, only the OS makes that determination. I'll bet you have XP right?

Jon

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. (Bertrand Russell)

 

[comtec17]

This has happened to my on a 160GB Maxtor. I upgraded my drivers for the Firewire adapter and it was fine. The slow speed though will happen for 10 power on's. This is set by Maxtor to do checks on the drive for the first 10 uses.

 

[comtec17]

I have just located on the maxtor website that this could be caused by the 1394 card IRQ using the same IRQ as another device.

http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...nl_JnBfY2F0X2x2bDI9fmFueX4mcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=

This article has info as well...

http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...nl_JnBfY2F0X2x2bDI9fmFueX4mcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=

 

[raybattersby]

Jontmke

You're right it's XP and I've only had it a few days. I upgraded from Win98Se to try to solve my Maxtor problem.

What are 'access rights'? What can I do to them to solve my 'read only' problem?

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[Jontmke]

In my computer right click on the drive\partition and choose properties. Go to the security page and make sure your user has full rights to the drive. If this is a home pc and you are not worried about unauthorised access give "Everyone" full access. But only do this if you have a good firewall because "Everyone" could be a hacker.

Jon

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. (Bertrand Russell)

 

[raybattersby]

Jontmke
Thanks for the info. I just bought $90 worth of XP books to fill the space in the Microsoft Windows XP Sales Carton that was full of air.

The cost of that unused space inside software boxes costs Microsoft in cardboard, printing and transportation fees; the distributor in storage space (fees) and the end vendor in shelf space - more cost. Why don't they just shrink-wrap the CD with a CD-size Setup book and reduce the packaging volume by 95%?

We're beyond the age when we thought that the size of a box was proportional to its value aren't we?

I'll keep you posted on my Maxtor issues.

Comtec17
Again thanks for your helpful comments. Unfortunately, there are no driver upgrades available from Swann or Maxtor but I'll be checking out the Interupt conflicts as you suggest if Jontmke's ideas don't solve the problem.

Many thanks to you two guys.

 

[fakifaki]

Hi.
I had same problem in my disk.. actually I don't know is it fine yet now but now I can do something (but i can't trust it.. yet).How full your disk is? My problems started when about 30-40Gb was free..everything what I desiced to copy to maxtor, corrupted. I bought 160Gb internal samsung and then moved as much as i could from maxtor to samsung. Near end of that process computer just lost my maxtor from drivelist and it didn't came back. When I tried to use scandisk it reported fail in master boot record MBT, or something like that, and couldn't go any forward. Lucky me after all because I didn't lost everything. I remove partition and split that drive to 2 partition. First partition works fine (but some reason upload doesnt work so fast than before, average about 5.5Mb/s in upload and download over 30Mb/s)) Right now I try to format second partition and time shows how it works.. I wanna believe that drive itself is ok. Maybe there is some problem in file system when using big partitions, i don't know.

 

[bcastner]

It is not a drive issue.

It is a driver issue for your firewire board. Go to the web site for the manufacturer of the firewire controller and update you drivers.

In some cases you may need to replace the controller board.

This is a driver issue.