[BBLISA] disk corruption recovery ideas?

[John Stoffel]

Eric> A few months ago I switched my home system's two external disks
Eric> from USB 2 to FireWire hoping for a speed improvement (which
Eric> didn't come.)

Make sure the firmware on your external disk enclosures is upto date.
I had horrible problems with a Prolific Technologies chipset in my
USB/Firewire external enclosure until I upgraded it.  It was unstable
under both Linux and Windows.  I was really disappointed.  

Eric> Once I did the switched I've had a occasional problem.... When I
Eric> print (via USB2 on the motherboard) I have occasionally gotten a
Eric> delayed write failure from Windows. It happens when I am
Eric> printing and then tried to save a file from photoshop (to an
Eric> external disk.) I'd just save the file again and everything was
Eric> happy.

So how are you doing backups of your data?  What are you going to do
when a disk dies completely?  Hopefully, you're using some sort of
RAID here... 

Eric> But how should I avoid this in the future? Has anyone else
Eric> seen/had a problem like this? I'm really afraid to use this
Eric> setup again. I could move one disk into the computer, but I have
Eric> only one free IDE "slot" free. Should I just move back to USB?

Can you get another IDE controller to put into the system (such as
HPT302 or 3ware) and use that to hold your disks?  Or if you want more
speed, you might think aboutt getting another USB2 PCI controller and
hanging all the disks off that.  

Eric> The hardware facts:
Eric> Win XP Pro with Service pack 2.
Eric> Athlon XP 2000+ box, 1G ram 1 120G internal disk.
Eric> 3 external disks (1 USB, 2 FireWire) all 250 Western Digital EIDE 8MB
Eric> Cache "special edition drives".
Eric> all onboard USB 2
Eric> Adaptec PCI FireWire controller.
Eric> Epson 4000 via USB2

I assume you have a CDROM/DVD/DVD-RW or something else in there?  I'd
only puy on disk/cdrom per-controller.  I never have Masters/Slaves on
the same IDE bus, it just kills performance.  

It might make sense to get a new case that has more drive bays and
bring your disks internally, along with a new controller card.  That's
probably what I would do.  

Eric> I'm looking for any and all ideas. I used the XP FireWire
Eric> drivers, I guess I could try to see if Adaptec has any.  I'd
Eric> rather not try to reinstall windows to do a "driver refresh".  I
Eric> just don't trust my setup any more, and that isn't acceptable.

I've been thinking about getting a Network NAS server for home,
something quiet and reliable.  I'm not as interested in speed as I am
in reliability.  And doing backups, but my DLT7000 has flaked out on
me... anyone know a good place to get it fixed?  It locks up the SCSI
bus when it hits EOT... not good.  

Good luck,
John