On Sun December 4 2005 4:34 pm, Robert Paxton wrote: I've had hours of frustration with external USB and Firewire devices on Windows, which you say is also corrupting your transfers. In my case, I stumbled on a hotfix on the Microsoft site that was supposed to cure 'write delay' failures. Since then, my externals have been functioning fairly well. I've done hours of research on the USB protocol and have multiple devices that give me problems one moment, not the next, that mount perfectly on one machine, and not the next, and on and on. I've come to the conclusion that it's an imperfect protocol that has varying degrees of competent adaptation by the various manufacturers - that's just a hypothesis. I'll watch this thread with interest to see if anyone has come up with a better explanation, or a solution. Presupposing that this is your problem - I've found, since starting to work with Linux 18 months ago, that in general, the drivers and devices behave better on my Linux boxes, and that the situation seems to improve with time - it's not perfect, and there are problems, but I've noted the difference several times to myself in recent months. I have a lot to compare since I manage a small office network of about 50 Windows pc's, and I now run about 10 Linux machines. I move externals back and forth between the various systems all the time, so I do have a lot of A/B comparisons chalked up. -- Claude Jones Bluemont, VA, USA