surprise! "device not ready" when downloading... (found and fixed)

[arjays]

I have three hard drives. The first two are FAT32, and the last one is NTFS. I have uTorrent set up so that "downloads" are directed to the NTFS drive, and, when completed, they get automatically "moved" (by uTorrent) to a FAT32 drive.

So things were going along, just fine, when, suddenly... everything "hit the fan".

My system "burped", and I wound up having to reload XP "from scratch". I've a pretty good process for this, because, for a while there, I was having to do it... a lot!

So, after I got everything got "back to normal", and after I translocated the "old" uTorrent config files from where I had saved them to, to where they needed to be, it was all good, except... I suddenly found that while the uTorrent "seeds" were working fine, the uTorrent "downloads" were "dying" with a "device not ready".

Imagine my surprise when I (eventually) noticed the obvious... the NTFS drive was no longer available. Oddly, it had "died" in such a way that XP simply... ignored it.

In my case, the "issue" (the "device not ready") was effectively an "artifact" of using the "old" uTorrent config files...

However, I would point out that if the drive had simply "died" between "reboots", the net effect would have been the same.

Ennyhoo... I "magicked" the NTFS drive, and it's all good, again, and my uTorrent is 100% back in the biz.

PS: I've noticed that, with my configuration, uTorrent handles files >4GB rather gracefully. In effect, uTorrent can't move the "big" files to the FAT32 drive, but... it doesn't get it's shorts snagged... instead, it just leaves 'em where they are, and that's that! Perhaps accidental, and apparently undocumented, but... it works just fine, so... there you are!