I have a Freecom 160gb USB 2.0 drive that I love. Recently I have been told that Disk-keeper would not defrag it as the drive needed a CHKDSK session run against it at boot time. I have two systems, 1: a DELL Optiplex run of the mill system that does all that's asked of it without complaint runninf XP Pro SP3, and 2: My home-brewed monster AMD64 based system running Vista Ultimate 64bit. Both now have this report, but neither will actually run the bootup session. I have tried playing with the USB settings in the BIOS but to no avail. I am concerned that a SMART problem I had with a SATA based external HDD might be about to repeat (I only discovered why this drive had failed when I removed it from it's proprietary case and plugged it directly into the mother-board of my main system to be told that I had better back everything up quick as this drive was about to fail. Hmm, Bit late there! Any ideas as to my next move?
Computers & Internet - Freecom - 80 GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive
Answers & Comments
Hi Again - managed to sort out my own problem by accident.
I was installing a new bit of kit and needed to access the BIOS. The reboot time came and I gave the three-fingered salute (CTRL +ALT + DEL), and lo and behold it went into the chkdsk routine! Then there was a delay whilst it took 2 hours to check the disk, but there were no errors.
As a matter of interest I then ran diskkeeper (without problem) and noticed the report was saying the MFT (Master File Table) file was way too small - an 98% capacity - and that I should increase it's limit. I did and ran the defrag again. I now have a very healthy external HDD that is as happy as me.
Hope this helps others.