I have 2 external hard drives - both USB. One is 160gb, and that's about all I know about it (bought it off ebay). The other is one of these: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products ... anguage=en

My computer has XP SP2 (with usb 2.0 driver), and the 160gb drive works fine. I just bought the WD and was having trouble using it - whenever I tried writing files to it, I'd get a 'usb device has malfunctioned' messgae. I tried formatting it to NTFS (that's what the 160gb is, the WD was originally FAT32), and I'd get the same error. So I hooked it up to a really old and crappy laptop with the slower usb ports, and it seemed to work fine. I successfully formatted it to NTFS with the laptop, but now when I hook it up to my good computer and attempt to write files to it, one of 3 things happens: 1)It works fine. Once I get files onto the drive, I can read them with no problems. 2) I get a 'delayed write failure' error message. 3) I get a 'delayed write failure' message, followed immediately by a 'usb device not recognized' message. Anybody have similar troubles with external drives, or have any ideas what might be causing my problems?

Not sure if it matters . . . Are you plugging both hds into the same port via a hub? This really shouldn't make a difference, but it may explain the delayed write error.

Possibly a dumb question, but are you sure the second hard drive supports USB2? It may not. Or you may have been screwed on ebay, buying a faulty drive.

Nah, thats not it. I've got them plugged into 2 separate ports on the front of the computer. Just to make sure, I turned the 160 off and tried copying a file to the 250, and got the same error. I've already RMA'd one of these, and I'll probably end up RMA'ing this one too if I can't figure it out by the time WD receives the first drive back.

Even if it doesn't support USB2, the port should be backwards compatible to 1.1

Are you sure the enclosure works? I know of a lot of people having problems with WDC drives. Woot sells them in mass quantities often, and people pick them up for cheap to sell off on ebay and whatnot. I have one that works fine connected to my mobo, I have not tried it in an external enclosure.

Its possible you have a shoddy external enclosure, but the drive is fine. How hot does the enclosure get after running for an hour or two?

I'll check that out now. And, just to clarify, the 160gb drive came from eBay and works fine. The first WD (250gb) drive came from buy.com. I RMA'd it, and got the second straight from WD. Also, the second drive DOES support USB 2.0. As for the possibility of a bad enclosure - is there any way I can check the enclosure without voiding the warranty?

Sorry, I was under the impression that you had an enclosure, and stuffed a new drive into it. It sounds like you actually bought a WD external drive setup. I have no experience with these. If it were me, rather than voiding the warranty, I would send it back.

Try turning off write caching. Also, don't use third-party copy programs like total copy, as these seem to increase the occurences of this error when copying large amounts of data at high speed. Use WD's drive check utility to check for bad sectors. These steps may reduce the number of delayed write errors you get, but they may not go away completely.

I've had this issue for a long time with more than one HD (USB and SATA2), and the general consensus around (meaning, searching for hours upon hours in forums on the net) seems its an issue with Windows having a problem with fast data transfer in USB2.0 and SATA2 (not USB 1.1 or SATA1). I tested this by throttling down my speeds. For instance, if I copy 50GB over a 100Mbit network to one of my SATA2 HDs, it works without a problem. However if I try to move the same amount of data over a 1Gbit network, I get the delayed write failure.

Bottom line: there does not seem a true fix for this anywhere (for Windows systems)