Moving big files in Win7...

  • Hey - turns out IRC is out and something a little more modern has taken it's place... A little thing called Discord!

    Join our community @ https://discord.gg/JuaSzXBZrk for a pick-up game, or just to rekindle with fellow community members.

Useless

Bravo
Jun 14, 2002
5,886
63
Scotland
I have some external drives and am trying to move large files to them from Win7. The drives are formatted as NTFS so this should be no problem. But after transferring a certain amount of the file it freezes and the rive stops being detected. I have to cancel the transfer to find the drive again and I can't copy the whole file over without this crash happening.

I've looked for solutions and the only one I found was to disable Auto Tuning, which I've done, but no difference. Has anyone else had this problem and / or found a solution?
 
no idea at all but I like SuperCopier a lot!


personally i am on XP and using:
SuperCopier 2 Beta 1.9 = http://supercopier.sfxteam.org/?q=node/19


but i just realized that there is a newer version, which the author says has been improved quite a bit. also windows 7 is supported according to the text. so i think this might be worth a try. all this is a quick and dirty workaround for your problem - but the tool itself is really cool anyway:
SuperCopier 2.2 Beta = http://supercopier.sfxteam.org/?q=node/65
 
Gave it a try but it failed with the same error. Win7 loses signal to the drive and it crashes :( Thanks anyway m8.
 
The only situations i've seen this in, is if the drive is failing, as in having bad sectors, which the USB -> SATA/PATA chip can't handle, and simply disconnects from USB, or when the drive is USB powered, and not getting a stable enough current.
If the copying stops at the same place the first is more likely. Try listening to the drive when this happens, to see whether it makes any repetitive clicking sounds which would indicate that its dying.
 
@ doh - every time I plug any of my drives in Win7 asks if I want to run Checkdisk, whether or not I ran the same scan last time. To tell the truth I have run chkdsk a couple of times on other drives and they let me copy big files to them, but then later they don't. It's hard to imagine that the same drives need scanned every single time I plug them in :( I don't understand why Win7 needs this. But if that's what I need to do I'll do it. Although I tried running chkdsk yesterday and the drive lost signal halfway through the check. So if I can't eve complete a scan without it disconnecting I dunno. Weird thing is I can leave the drive powered on for hours and it doesn't disconnect, as long as I don't try to transfer a file to it.

As for the drives failing, there are no clicking sounds (I know the ones you mean, I used to hear them from internal drives that were failing) and the point at which the transfer fails seems totally random. All the drives have independent power too.

@ Ulv - Ye, I already tried that yesterday, spent ages splitting a file with HJSplit and with Winrar too - the transfer just fails all the same, even though I'm now transferring 700MB sections.

Thanks for replies :cuddle:
 
start > Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt < Right Click Run As Administrator

In cmd window Type

Code:
chkdsk X: /f/r/b
change the X for whatever drive letter is

wait till its finished and try copy files over again

If fails its prolly hardware related
 
btw just out of interest: what happens when you limit the copy speed with SuperCopier to say 1/10 of the normal speed?
 
also: could this still be a voltage/current problem?
are you sure you don't have too much connected to
- one power outlet on the wall?
- one fuse?
- the PC PSU? (maybe the USB stream fails because you have too many components running in your PC and the first thing noticeably affected is the USB controller because it can't handle too much voltage fluctuation?? <-- wild guess)
- etc?
- (just to make sure again: the drives have a separate power connector and are not 2.5" powered via USB?)


in theory it could be
 
and: (maybe more towards db and timo?)

could a very bad S.M.A.R.T. value cause win7 to suggest a checkdisk when connecting the drive? bad S.M.A.R.T. values wouldn't be a big surprise considering how often the drive(s) fail, right?
 
Updates:

I tried your chkdsk switches DB but there are apparently so many files on the drive that the check crawls through the fourth stage. 4 hours in and only 3000 of 400,000+ files scanned - hopeless, I just cancelled.

I managed to get the file split into 6 .rar parts and copy them over, but this is no use for most other files - I don't want to have to split and rejoin big files every time, that's ridiculous.

On the other hand, I tried Hardcore's suggestion of limiting the speed (to around half in my case) and it worked first time :confused: So thanks for that m8 :clap: The power is all fine and balanced, very few other components in use (vid card, soundcard...), all independent power and I only ever have one at a time on anyway.

Event Viewer shows nothing btw DB, literally 0 entries in the Hardware section.

Looks like limiting the speed is the way to go, so I'm happy with that. I still don't understand why a faster transfer speed would have caused the drive to disconnect (or Win7 to stop detecting it at least), but any solution is a good one.

Thanks again. Tune in again next week!
 
i don't really get it either. because

a)
copying 1x 4GB vs. copying 6x 4GB/6 ...
both are almost equally hard on the drive's hardware imo.

and b)
joining those two files directly on the disc... ?!? i mean it reads and writes at the same time during that operation (aka the actuator arm with the read/write head on it is most likely going left and right all the time. the less cache the drive has the more often). so that operation must be very stressing for the drive. and the operation should take a lot longer than copying all the parts on it.



therefore my bet would have been, that

a) reasons mentioned above @ a)
splitting the large files and copying them over all at once (= windows creates a list and copies the exact same amount of data...) would make no difference at all. the same problem should have occured. ((only solution: create very many parts and copy them over one by one = bursts of not that much writing work on the drive and effectively ~ half the original speed on average))

b) reasons mentioned above @ b)
i think such a procedure (joining from and to the same physical non-sdd-drive) is stressful for the hardware and should have caused your problem...


and that is why i suggested lowering the speed. (cause less 'stress' for the drive)
but apparently that kind of stress is not the problem!
.
.
.

but maybe the drive's problem is:
continuous writing (not much head movement but... a lot of erm... writing??) for a relatively long time. difference between reading and writing? (at this stage i hope that continous reading is absolutely not a problem, right???) i think the difference is, that you have to force the bits = create a magnetic field stead of just measuring it. which costs more power (current*voltage). so is it a current or voltage problem in the end?? :???:

confus0ring. but if that is true ( continuous writing is the problem ) then @ a) please tell me, that you didn't copy and paste all the parts ( = windows copies them over one by one without a pause in between ) but that you copied them manually one by one!

anyway i am glad that everything works for you =)
but i'd still not rely on that drive too much.
(hey erm. maybe test some other similar drive, that has been reported to be working flawlessly)
 
Last edited:
Well, all of these worked fine under XP, this error never occurred. I know it's not the drives because old or new, different makes, capacities... the fail occurs on all. So it's a Win7 problem definitely. When trying to copy an 8Gb file it failed every single time, when I cut it up into bits I copied and pasted all at once, so Windows did them one at a time, as usual. Is this bad? It's just bandbox selecting multiple files and letting them move in order, whether using explorer or the copier util you gave me. Or, when copying and pasting a bunch of files of differing sizes the smaller ones would make it while the bigger ones (2Gb+ ?) failed pretty much every time.

Grr, I dunno any more. I don't like certain things about Win7 and this is one :(