Hard Drive Event 50/51 – Paging Errors

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3d human with a red exclamation markEvent ID 50 and 51 are generic errors that may occur anytime paging information is requested from a drive. Similar Event IDs are 9, 11 and 15. A paging operation is defined as anytime the operating system writes or reads data from memory to drive, or reads from the hard drive and writes to memory. These errors are not caused by the external storage device. The error may be related to problems in either the USB / ATA / SCSI / 1394 controller sub system or another storage device. Here are some troubleshooting tips to help you diagnose and pinpoint the problem.

  • Maxtor Personal Storage Devices are not recommended for backup of entire drive volumes or large volume transfer over a computer network. Slow command responses due to network traffic can cause these errors.
  • File size limits. A single file cannot exceed 4 GB in the FAT 32 file system. Reformatting the drive in the NTFS File System allows a maximum file as large as the entire drive. Windows 98 and Millennium Edition do not support NTFS.
  • Close all applications not immediately needed. Close all email applications and disable Power Management schemes, all pre-scheduled diagnostics, CD auto-insert notification, Window Update polling, and virus control programs. Shut down all applications that actively poll the I/O subsystem or use CPU cycles.
  • Simplify the device chain. Disconnect all other devices from the controller. Allow only the Maxtor USB Personal Storage Device on the USB controller. If you have a USB mouse, keyboard, or printer, substitute the equivalents serial or parallel port device to isolate the issue.
  • Note the time. Find out if errors occur under certain operations (such as backups), after the system has been on for a long period of time or during heavy disk drive processing.
  • Hard drives show these errors under heavy stress, often due to a slow CPU speed. In a multitasking environment like Windows, the processor may not be fast enough to process all the I/O commands that come in nearly simultaneously.
  • Try replacing the interface cable or moving the drive in question to another controller. If the problem follows the drive, consider replacing it.

These are operating system based error messages. See the Microsoft Knowledge base:

  • Q244780 Information about Event ID 51
  • Q308417 How to set performance options in Windows XP
  • Q154690 How to troubleshoot Event 9 and Event 11 error messages
  • Q259237 Troubleshooting Event ID 9, 11, 15 on Cluster Servers
  • Q126025 Disable CD ROM auto run
  • Q182335 Format of Event Log data created by ScsiPortLogError