I have a new machine running WinXP Pro-SP2 up and running for about 3 weeks trouble free. About two weeks ago I pulled a hard drive (NTFS) from my previous machine which was running WinXP Home and had died (the MB,I Think),put it in an Ultra external enclosure, and plugged it into my new machine via USB 2.0. My plan was to first retrieve some data files from it, test it for reliability, and then delete most of what was on it and use it for backup. This hard drive is a WD 120, 7200. For the past two weeks this drive/enclosure combo worked flawlessly. Read/writes have been fast and accurate. No funny noises or glitches of any kind. Then yesterday I returned to the booted, but idle computer and noticed a triangular yellow message next to the clock which said something about windows failing to save data for the J:\$mft file, whatever that might be. J:\ is the drive letter for the Ultra/HD combo. I looked at the drive with my File Manager and the only file showing was the old autoexec.bat. I shut down and started again and everything was back to normal with all files showing.I copied what I needed most to my new computer and then started to delete stuff little by little. After a couple of hours while deleting a big directory, my machine froze and the following message popped up.: "Windows was unable to save all of the data for file J:\$mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or a network connection. Please try to save the file elsewhere." The desktop and keyboard were unresponsive and I had to use the power button to shut down. I turned off the Ultra drive and restarted. Everything else seems OK so far. Is this the Ultra/ Drive itself, a bad or loose USB cable, or something else?

Hi lou, The initial char '$' would seem to indicate a temp file. Is J: set as temp or cache drive? Is FINDFAST running? Scheduled backup? M2

I found a definition for $mft: " The MFT is a relational database that consists of rows of file records and columns of file attributes. It contains at least one entry for every file on an NTFS volume, including the MFT itself. Because the MFT stores information about itself, NTFS reserves the first records of the MFT for metadata files. Metadata file names begin with a $ as shown in the following table. The remaining records of the MFT contain the file and folder records for each file and folder on the volume. Metadata Files Stored in the Master File Table : $Mft - Record for each file and folder on an NTFS volume. " J is the drive letter assigned by windows when the drive is connected to the computer via usb 2.0. Finfast is not running andthere are no scheduled backups.