Hi Well....the story is bit long..to cut in short..i have issues with external usb HDD which is connected to my Toshiba M60 notebook via usb2.0 interface..every now and then the HDD becomes unusable on XP with SP2 OS..for some time it works fine and all of sudden windows says that the drive is not formatted...and normally before that i usually recieves the error message for DELAYED WRITE FAIL on usb drive...i tried the FAT32 and NTFS formatting for the drive, surface scan bad sector checking etc..etc..disk is fine...all other usb devices work fine..flash drives works fine..but the usb HDD do not..now i am frustrated from loosing data, formatting HDD again and again..aaha..one more thing..one day like this the HDD was shown unformatted..and when i booted the system on MSODS it recognized the partition and the fine system on it..even the directory structure...i was able to read and write on the disk..but in windows XP again it was unformatted.. any ideas???? Reagrds Praveen

STOP using this HD (the more you try fisx it the lesser the chance for recovery). I have one question: Do you always consult the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the systray for safe removal before you actually removed it? i_XpUser

Does this HDD act this way with other computers?

how much cable do you have etween the drive and the comp, i used to have similer problems becuast i used a 6 foot usb cable, when i swiched to a 2 foot the problemsa went away, i think theres some resisetance in the cable. back up all ur data asap. there might be a problem with the actual hardrive...also, like mentioned above, does it work on other comps?

Alright I think the problem is the failure to follow the Safely Remove Hardware feature. I have seen many posts that wailed over external USB memory stick & USB external HD suddenly becoming unformatted or RAW. What happens is that when an application is hooked to it and you withdraw the device the consequence is usually dire. i_XpUser