I don't know if this is a coincidence but I have had some issues after upgrading to SP 2 last week and I think it may have contributed to corrupting a brand new external drive causing me to lose 70 gigs of data! It involves onboard ports as well as ports on PCMCIA cards. This seems to be a known issue with Microsoft because they have created a patch. If you have recently upgraded to SP 2 and have noticed decreased speeds in 1394a or 1394b, this could be the problem. Apparently the registry is altered and has to be recalibrated and this patch does this. Does anyone else know anything about this or experienced any symptoms after upgrading to SP 2?

Microsoft Patch
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222

I have not personnally seen it. There was a similar issue with both USB and 1394 during the beta of SP2, but I thought it was fixed. sigh.

Ouch! Sorry to hear about that. I did just learn about the IEEE 1394 speed issue a few days ago, but I didn't know it could involve corrupting data on external drives. Have you been able to retrieve your files? If not, I can recommend GetDataBack for NTFS (http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm). If it is just the partition table that has been corrupted on the drive you should be able to use Active@ Partition Recovery (http://www.partition-recovery.com) to restore it.

Well, I don't really know if that was the problem but since it is a known issue that SP2 affects 1394, that could have happened thereby either slowing the speed causing dropped frames or interrupting the data stream that can corrupt files. Maxtor told me that if a cable to a drive was removed during data transfer it could corrupt the file or cause other collateral issues. They also said this could possibly happen if the cable was removed when the drive is periodically caching. That's why it's important to always use the safe to remove feature before disconnecting any attached hardware even though there is an option in Windows not to use it.

When I click on properties for my external drive it now says RAW instead of NTFS, not good! Have a lost everything or do you think recovery software like you mentioned can retrieve it? Right, now I can't even access the drive. It says drive cannot be accessed, it has been corrupted.

I have been able to recover data from a corrupted external hard drive before. I'd recommend downloading the demo version of GetDataBack for NTFS and running it. It will show you if the files are still on the drive. If they are, once you purchase a serial number you can copy them off of the drive (make sure you have enough space to store them somewhere else).

You could also try the demo version of Active@ Partition Recovery to see if it would be able to recover the partition table (if that is what is corrupted), but the hard drive would have to be hooked up inside your computer to an ATA/IDE connection before the program could access it.

So I don't need to be able to actually access the drive to use the Get Back recovery software?

So I don't need to be able to actually access the drive to use the Get Back recovery software?
No, you don't need to be able to access the drive through Windows. As the Web site says,

Recover even when Windows doesn't recognize the drive-
GetDataBack can even recover your data when the drive is no longer recognized by Windows. It can likewise be used even if all directory information - not just the root directory- is missing.

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You can download and run the demo to check if it can actually see the drive and files.

Wow! The Get Back recovery software got back all 70 gigs!! It cost $79 but was worth every penny! One important note though. If anyone uses this software, be sure to use 1394 or USB 2.0 as your connection and NOT USB 1.1. Using USB 1.1 said it would take almost two days to recover the files!! When I cancelled that and switched to a 1394 connection, uhhh, it said 3 hours to complete the recovery. That thing was really moving as it recovered and displayed the files. It was like giving the software a laxative it moved so much faster. Thanks for the info!

I am glad to hear it. Will need to mark that as a useful item.

Glad to know that you got your data back! It is never fun to learn that a hard drive is corrupted/going bad, but at least you were able to retrieve your files.

So you should now be able to apply the patch and put the media back on the external drive. Wow. I bet it's been a tough week on you with all the sweating and stress. Would have been on me.

Glad you're back to operational.

Sean McHenry

So you should now be able to apply the patch and put the media back on the external drive.I never experienced that issue with the slower speed. I just heard about it and thought I would post it because it was sort of a coincidence with my issue after I had upgraded to SP2. I have since reformatted that external drive and have been successfully loading video to it ever since. I still cannot load video to my internal laptop drive without dropping frames though which was my original issue.

there's a few workarounds since the M$ fix doesn't work correctly. even after the fix, you'll find that the frame rate isn't what it used to be. if you're running 1394b spb2's get the 1394b drivers at www.unibrain.com. if your running video capture from cameras, replace the XPSP2 1394a drivers with the ones from XPSP1. They're a strait across copy/paste from an older XPSP1 installation. That's the only real way to fix things.