DV9500t and Vista shutting down external firewire drive?

I'm migrating files from my old notebook by copying them to an external firewire drive enclosure then over to my DV9500t.

After copying files from the old machine for a few hours, I plugged the drive into the DV9500t firewire port. Before I could get very far transferring files, I heard the external drive completely spin down. I tried refreshing the drive listing and it seemed to spin up again to show the files, then it immediately spun down again.

Is this normal for external firewire drives attached to the DV9500t or could it be a Vista power saving "feature"? This external drive never completely spins down when connected to my WinXP notebook or desktop and it has worked fine without any issues for the past year.

Is it possible that the external drive is going bad or maybe the enclosure power supply is dying? It would be quite a coincidence if it started to fail at exactly the same time I started to use it with the DV9500t and Vista.

I have my power settings on Maximum Performance and I didn't see any setting that would shut down an external drive, immediately (within seconds) of refreshing a directory listing.

Before I go out and buy a new external drive, let me know if you have any troubleshooting tips or if this is something to do with Vista or the DV9500t firewire connection.

Thanks.

 

My firewire drive appears to "sleep" after long periods of inactivity, but it has never done so in the middle of a file transfer. Even when it seems to be off, it will immediately spring to life once I click on the drive icon.

I had assumed this was a power-saving feature in Vista, but my USB drive does not "sleep" during prolonged inactivity when tethered to Vista.

My guess is that this is part of the 1394a protocol, or the firewire drive's chipset is responsible for this.........

Note: I see a powersaving option in Device Manager for USB (which is unchecked), but I see no such thing for 1394.........

 

Thanks for the reply. I had a look in my Device Manager and saw the same thing. It's good to hear that your firewire drive does have a sleep function, I've never seen that behavior with my drive on my other machines running XP.

I've been testing the external drive on my old notebook for the past few hours, transferring files back and forth and it has been working 100% fine. I was worried that the drive or enclosure might be failing, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I'll give it another try on the DV9500t and see what happens. Your post also gave me an idea that I should try out the USB connection instead of firewire (my enclosure has both, but I've never used the USB). Hopefully, I can be sure that the drive won't shutdown on the USB connection, since the USB Power Management drive shutdown setting is unchecked.

 

Well, I spent the rest of the day using the external firewire drive. It didn't interrupt any transfers or cause any errors, but it was shutting on and off frequently, sometimes every few minutes. I guess it may be normal for this hp system and vista, but it's very disconcerting because it sounds like the power switch is being flipped off every few minutes. It's not the graceful spin down of the internal notebook drives.

I guess I'll just have to get used to it (or try the USB connection).

 

Just for comparison's sake, I'd hook up the drive to USB and see if it exhibits the same actions. If it does not, it must be a Firewire "thing".

 

You may have noticed that soon after you plugged in the firewire drive for the first time, within a day or so you had a windows update. This update is to fix some problems like this in Vista with firewire. I had a similar problem, but it wiped all the data on the drive. I'd say you were lucky

 

FWIW - I have an HP Pavilion a6157 desktop computer (which I am looking to replace or supplement with a dv9500t - which is why I frequent this forum). I also have a MyBook connected via Firewire.

Long story short, I have been experiencing frequent crashes (which manifests itself with the Vista version of BSOD). After clicking yes to the dialogue box that asks if you would like 'Windows to search for a solution to the problem' I received a second pop-asking for volunteers in the Seattle area to help Microsoft diagnose the issue.

The following provides some background on the issue as well as a link to one of the bugs they have fixed which may help in the situation you are discussing here.

Please let us know.



Volunteers -

Thank you immensely for your response to our volunteer request. Your willingness to help Microsoft troubleshoot this problem is greatly appreciated. We are tracking a problem in Vista where certain system activities becomes stuck during power transition (going into or out of hibernation) and eventually cause a blue screen. The root cause behind the stuck operation is not yet clear to us, we are hoping to work with a few volunteers to reproduce and troubleshoot the failure.

By analyzing a large number of these crashes we have determined that this particular crash can happen for a few different reasons, but there are three primary sources of failure:

1. A Microsoft bug in firewire (1394) connections, in a driver named sbp2port.sys. This problem has been fixed and is available on the Microsoft Download Center at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=941649.
2. Faulty hardware on the machine, which causes communication between the operating system and attached devices to go wrong.
3. Stuck power transition state.

We are primarily seeking assistance with the third failure. The first failure (the Microsoft bug) is resolved with the Update available on the Download Center, and the second failure (faulty hardware) cannot be addressed through software. The third failure is the open issue we are trying to address.

 

Thanks for the comments. It sounds like I dodged a bullet here, since my drive is still working.

Just for the record, I had already installed Hotfix 941649 along with five other Hotfixes linked in various threads after a clean install and before connecting my drive. All my continuing powering on and off problems have happened after applying that Hotfix, so obviously it doesn't fix much (or it may be the reason I didn't lose my data).

Anyway it sounds like item 3. "Stuck power transition state" is to blame or else HP is using faulty firewire controllers.

From now on, I will switch to USB only to stay on the safe side.

 

I had already applied the hotfix prior to use of the drive as well, but don't exhibit those symptoms.

On a side note, I'd read external drive reviews on NewEgg before my purchase and noticed a good many comments relating to unexpected shutdown on some brands. I wonder if it is the drives' particular chipset after all that does not agree with the controller.........

 

My drive is a standard internal drive that I put in an external enclosure. I know the firewire chipset is Oxford. It's worked for 1-2 years on all my XP machines, one notebook and various desktops all with different firewire cards, without any problems. So it's either Vista (most likely) or faulty/finicky hardware in the HP.

The reason I haven't ever tried the USB connection is because the USB chipset on my enclosure isn't as highly rated as the Oxford firewire chipset and I also thought performance might lag behind the firewire connection. Anyway, I'll have to try it an see if I can make due with USB.


Another thing that worries me about the "Stuck power transition state" issue is that my notebook's internal drives also seem to be clunking off and on a lot. I have seen other threads where people say that it's normal, but maybe it's happening more often than it should. My Dell with XP never makes sounds like that, except when I close the lid or shutdown.


One more semi-related note: I have a SanDisk USB flash drive that I also use on my old XP notebook and desktops. On XP, when I "Safely Remove Hardware" the power light on the drive shuts off. On my HP in Vista, the light never shuts off even after it says it's safe to remove the device. Have you seen this behavior?

 

Yep, I now remember people arguing over Oxford vs Initio. Is there a way to tell without opening the enclosure? Mine is one of those Apricorn Aegis portables that came with it's own drive......

I'm sure the USB will be a bit slower. There was an average 10MB/sec difference in transfer speed between the two interfaces for me.

What internal drive do you have? You may want to run the mfgr's diagnostic tools on it to be sure......

 

Well, I remember I researched it when I bought it. Also, when I do "Safely Remove Hardware" is shows "Oxford ..." in the selection dialog. It may show up in Device Manager when it's plugged in, but I've never checked.

For reference the DV9500t controller shows a RICOH OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller with Microsoft driver 6.0.6000.16386

I have two Seagate ST9120822AS 120GB drives. They both make the same sounds, but that doesn't mean much since a Vista power issue could be affecting them in the same way. I'll put drive diagnostics on my to-do list.

 

Odd. Mine comes up as "SBP2 Device" in the Safely Remove selection dialog.......

Mine is identical.

I have a Seagate ST9120823AS 120GB in mine, and it makes no clicking or clunking sounds. It is very silent.

Unless the "822AS" drives are normally noisy, I'd definitely check it out (although it would be strange for both drives to be defective).