Occasionally when I am running the PortableApps platform off of my 500GB Toshiba Canvio Connect Portable Hard Drive, all of the apps will crash and display the following message in a balloon from the notification area:
Windows-Delayed Write Failed
Windows was unable to save all the data for E:/@BitMap. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network. Please try to save this file elsewhere.
E:/ refers to my portable hard drive where the Platform and apps are running from. I never got this error before. I am running Windows XP. I have also gotten this error when running Windows 7 on a different computer. If you would like to see a screenshot I took, I can email it to you. I need a response ASAP because this becomes a major problem when I am working and have unsaved documents open. Thank you in advance!
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Note that Windows write caching can be turned off so your files will always be written to the drive immediately, but it will negatively affect the speed and lifetime of your drive.
Supposedly this issue can also be caused by working on very large files (part of the page file exhaustion point above).
Note that none of the possible reasons I've listed are software related - in my experience it is always either hardware/firmware/the OS that is to blame for this error.
1. I am not sure what BIOS settings do
2. The drive shouldn't have problems, it's brand new
3. See number 2
4. My USB ports never gave me trouble before. My drive is compatible with USB 2.0 and 3.0 and my Win7 computer has one of those but my WinXP computer either has USB 1.0 or USB 1.1
5. I'm not sure turning off write-caching is the best idea because my computer is already extremely slow, but if worse comes to worse...
6. I haven't been working with large files at all when it happens, nothing larger than Firefox
7. How would I tell if my data is corrupted?
The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
1. Not something you want to play with lightly. I would assume this isn't the problem and that the settings should be set at OK values, but can't say without actually being at your computer.
2-4. Just because they are new doesn't mean there is nothing wrong with them, but those are usually the least likely causes.
5. Usually the most common cause. It is not dangerous, you can Google how to do it easily enough - even if you try it just to try it and change the setting back again if it doesn't fix things. Also, it is per-drive, so disabling it for an external drive won't affect your internal drives.
6. No worries, had to check.
7. Not your data, it is Windows handling stuff incorrectly in the background, so you will never see it to know it is corrupted. It is usually caused (on XP) due to combinations of hardware, beyond that I can't tell you anything more specific.
Right now it seems the most likely cause is that the USB cable is coming loose from the hard drive. I'll make extra sure it is inserted securely and I'll let you know what happens.
The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
As Winterblood says, your most likely problem is Hardware/Windows related, but one other thing to check.
What does "@Bitmap" relate to in your original post? The only references I've seen to this expression is in SQL programming/scripting.
MJA
I typed something else $Btmp or something like that. It must have formatted into @BitMap by the forum.
The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
O.K. We've all fallen victim to predictive text and auto-spellcheck features. The $btmp message is just Windows doing its best to be 'helpful' by telling you it can't write to the external hard drive.
Sounds as though you've probably identified the problem if the USB connection is a bit weak/loose. An irritating one, but not that uncommon.
MJA