XP System Crashes with External HDDs

This is a subject that is barely on-topic in the Premiere forums, but since it
has affected me in Premiere, I’m asking, in hopes that Harm, Jim, or some of the
others, who use external HDDs for storage can help me. Also, I’m not sure that
anyone is reading the PP2>Hardware forum any more, but I posting, hoping that
someone will see this. I thought about the Video Lounge, but it IS a technical
question, so here goes.

I’ve got about a dozen external HDDs, mostly Maxtor (now Seagate) One-Touch III
1TB dual-FW/USB units, but some Western Digital 1TB and a few WD 500GB units.
All are attached via IEEE1394-800 connections. I Capture to internal HDD, then
transfer the files to an external, or several, for storage. Before I bring these
into Premiere for editing, I Copy them to the internal HDD. In my particular
case, the internals are: 4-500GB SATA II’s, plus 1-750GB ATA-100. It’s to the
750GB, that I usually Copy the files, and set up my PP2 Project on that drive.
Scratch Disks are on the 500GB SATA’s. All disks are set for no Indexing. All
disks are NTFS and the OS is XP-Pro SP-2 with all of the updates. When working
in PP2, I end all processes with EndItAll2, after closing NAV, SpySweeper,
StopZilla and even QT from the Taskbar. The system is connected to the Internet
via a cable modem, but nothing else is running during editing.

Now, for the problem. I have begun having system shutdowns, and the cryptic
Windows’ message is that it was caused by a device driver, but there is no way
to get any details. These shutdowns usually come when the system is busy in PP2,
though a very few have happened in EncoreDVD, or while the system is otherwise
idle.

I’m wondering if anyone else has had similar problems when running external
HDD’s. I do not use the Maxtor One-Touch (backup), though it is installed as
part of the driver package. Same for the WD units, and only the WD Utilities and
drivers are installed. Maxtor/Seagate does not have any newer drivers for the
units, only updates for MAC.

I do not feel that this is, in anyway, related to PP2, it’s just that it is
often running and using its share of resources. I’m looking for help, and
suggestions, before I start uninstalling all Maxtor programs, only to have to
re-install something, when none of the HDDs works. I would not think that XP-Pro
needs separate drivers, but maybe I’m wrong there.

Thanks for the input and the thoughts,
Hunt

Bill,

What makes you think the externals cause this? Does it not happen when you have
your externals off? Does the Event Manager/System give you relevant info? Did
you check with Speedfan that your temperatures are OK and your fans working? If
your mobo or CPU are developing a fever, they may need to sleep it off. Does the
graphics card maybe get too hot?

Often in these mysterious cases the first things to check are temperatures and
the power supply. Remember that USB and fire wire devices also draw power. You
can use this Power Calculator to check whether you have a sufficiently capable
PS: <http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp>

Bill,

Just to be more complete in the information, I encountered something similar,
sudden system reboots and initially I suspected the video card was having
problems. This was an older card, so I took the opportunity to upgrade to a more
capable one. But that did not solve it. Still the sudden shutdowns/reboots. It
was not the temperature, the CPU got definately hotter during hour long
rendering session, but with temperatures of around 48 degrees C, that could not
be the culprit. It finally turned out to be the PS, that was giving problems on
one of the power rails. Exchanged the PS and my problems were gone.

Harm,

Glad to see you are still reading this forum. Thank you for the input. I will
look into SpeedFan, but think that the case is more than adequately cooled - all
components. I've 8 large fans: case, video card (nVidia Quadro FX4500-512MB),
HDDs and CPUs. All are working fine, but I have NOT monitored the temps. This I
will do. PS is 800W HD unit, equally well-cooled, but I'll check into this, as
well. Case is aluminum tower with great air-flow, but no liquid cooling.

The shutdowns DO only come, when the externals are up, and running. I've done
several overnight Renders and, if the externals are off-line, have not had one
re-boot. Event manager sometimes charts the shutdowns, but sometimes misses them
completely. I do get the "Your system has suffered... " and, after
reporting back to the "mother ship" in Redmond, I get the "Device
driver... " troubleshooting Web page.

I have contacted Maxtor/Seagate, but have not gotten a response yet. Going back
to my Pinnacle Studio days, I had a problem, when rendering to Maxtor One-Touch
250GB externals from my laptop. I did not get shutdowns, per se, then, but
instead got hangs, with errors on file generation, and Windows (XP-MCE on that
unit) read/write errors. Maxtor basically stated to NOT use the externals for
Rendering. Also, I still had Indexing on with those, a learned to kill that
process.

I will do a temp test (have a few utilities already, but will look into
more/better ones). I'll check out the PS, as it is still under warranty.

Thank you for your input. If I can get Maxtor/Seagate to respond, I'll look into
their solutions. One thing I'll also try is stop the loading of everything
Maxtor with MSconfig, to see if I can still run the externals without any of
that (seems there are three processes in the Maxtor startup), especially as I do
not use their "One-Touch" BU. I'll also isolate the external chain, so
that I have only the WD units, or the Maxtor units, just to make sure that it's
the Maxtors. Because of the issues with the laptop, I tend to lean in their
direction, but could be overlooking something else, based on other problems with
other equipment, some years back.

As always, thank you for your thoughts on this. Having seen the schematic of
your system, you were the first person, that I thought of, when I set out to
address this issue.

Using CCleaner you can easily delete the registry keys that start the OneTouch
software permanently. An alternative approach might be to use ProcExp from
Sysinternals to disable the Matrox software temporarily by using Kill Process
Tree.

 <http://www.piriform.com/> for CCleaner and
 <http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/ProcessEx
plorer.mspx>
for Process Explorer.