Every few minutes I get this error message below:



Does this mean that my external hdd is dying (please say no!). I've never seen it before, and this just started maybe an hour ago. I installed some crap for my wife's new MP3 player (HERE) wich installed WMP 11. I was showing her how to drag and drop music files from the external hdd into the mp3 player, when after copying maybe 5 of 40 songs, it gave that error and then gave it a bunch of times and only copied a few of the songs over. Hmmm....so I tried to do a disc check...it wouldn't do it. I tried to defrag it (which I do at least monthly) and it wouldn't do it. I tried opening files from it, only some of which I can open. I can't open squat in wmp 11, but can open some music files with Creative audio player. for most of the files, it won't play them at all or it'll start to play them then stop after a split second.

I'm going to tinker with it some, but in a panic I've made this post to see what input others might have! I'm not sure if it's caused by wmp 11 or if it's starting to fail.....

EDIT: I should also mention that this drive is shared via a wireless network with my sons computer upstairs. He said that he wasn't using the J: drive, nor had he used it all day. I don't know if I believe him. Perhaps I should sell him on Ebay just to be on the safe side....Kidding. I believe him.

I get those errors every now and again, as far as I understand it, all it means is that the HDD was in the middle of doing something and lost the connection, as a result it says that there was a write failure. I wouldn't worry about it, happens to 3 of my disks, they are still working.

Just to be on the safe side, how old is the HDD and how extensive is its use?

The drive is about 2 years old (give or take a few months), and is used probably daily, and never turned off (it's usb connection, western digital 160gb external hdd). I tinkered with it last night with no luck. I shut it off and went to bed. I'll tinker with it some more tonight when I get home. I'm starting to wonder if it's a USB deal....seeing as how it said it's having problems accessing the drive....I'll have to install my extra usb card to see if that'll help it. I've never seen that error before (ever!) and went into a minor panic!:wacko:

This happens when your MFT size is messed up. Go to www.diskeeper.com and get a free trial. Once installed, there is an option somewhere in the options/preferences called Frag Shield. This will re-pad your MFT and resize it. I would recommend telling it to place it to a Recommended Size. This should solve your problems.

I had the same problem on my WD Cavier SE 250GB drive.

UDATE: As I stated earlier, I had turned the drive off, and didn't get back to it until I knew I was going to have enough time to tinker with it. Today, I turned it on, auto play kicked in, and it asked what I wanted to do...I selected "take no action".

Oddly enough, everything works fine! I can run a disc check on it (no errors found), defrag was at 0% (I defrag it atleast once every 2 weeks, along with the rest of my drives), and Nortons disc doctor didn't find anything wrong with it. I can save, move, copy and delete anything on it with no errors at all....I have no clue It's perfectly fine now! I figured that I'd just give an update to let everyone know what was going on with it!

Thanks for the tips and help everyone!

No probs,

The drive should be fine, errors like that will only happen if you loose power or a cable comes loose while the drive is performing a task such as copying a file accross.