I have this older external USB HD, 160 GB. I was using it to copy my Steam games to another computer. On the source computer, Windows 7 64-bit, everything worked fine. Drive reported no errors, had no hiccups, etc.

Plugging it into the Windows XP 32-bit computer, it worked fine for looking through the files, moving files around on it (no real reading/writing, just modifying the filesystem table). However, when copying files from it to my internal HD, after a couple seconds to tens of minutes (seemingly random times), the USB device becomes unrecognized and it reports a delayed write error.

Events in system log go like this, chronologically:

(number times displayed)xSource (Event ID): "message"

2xdisk (51): An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation.

1xftdisk (57): The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.

1xApplication popup (26): Windows - Delayed Write Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file E:\$Mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.

1xntfs (50): {Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file . The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.

These repeat for a while, then there is 10+ disk messages or ftdisk messages.

Other notes:

• This occurs on random files at random times.
• This problem cannot be replicated on the Windows 7 source machine when copying from the HD to a different location on its local disk
• chkdsk /f was run and found no errors. chkdsk /f/r has the delayed write issue.
• drive was set to quick removal. Setting to performance in device manager yielded same result
• I am not writing anything to the USB external drive, so I am not sure why there is even a delayed write error (writing file access times?)
• local Windows XP was chkdsk'd without problems
• Windows XP machine has no problems with other USB HD's
• Various USB ports were attempted
• Rebooting did not help
• Occurs with SyncToy as well as windows explorer
• SMART status is good on both local drive and the external one
• Lack of gaming is making me cranky