Hard lockup when transferring large data from one HD to another

[quique]

I have two HD, a Maxtor 20gb 5400 rpm, UDMA66, and a Quantum fireball 10gb 5400 rpm, UDMA66. Everytime I transfer large files (>50mb) from quantum (primary master) to maxtor (secondary master) my computer always locks up. Please help!!!

Soyo 6VBA-133 PIII 533EB
generic 64mb ram
10gb Quantum fireball
20gb Maxtor

 

[piku]

Are they stacked right near each other? It could be overheating possibly. The heat of constant writing and rewriting of both drive at the same time for an extended period may be whats doing it.

Its a LONG shot, but may be it.

 

[quique]

Nope, the HDs are not stacked...but do you think different brand names makes a difference? Someone said to use one as a master and one as a slave on the same cable...haven't tried that yet though...

 

[AngelOfDeath]

Hmmm one thing is for sure it's not the heat. It will never get even close to warm when they use 5400 rpm. When did that problem start? and how long have you had these hd's?.

Have you tried to reinstall the system?

 

[ricow]

did you try to install them on different IDE channels

 

[DaddyG]

They are on different channels, he said he didn't try them on the same channel as master and slave. Question, What else is in the string with the HD's, Cd-roms, Burners, DVD ??. Also what drivers and OS are you using ?. The 64 meg of generic ram, is PC133 ??

 

[Aboroth]

It is probably a driver issue. Most likely nothing is wrong with your hard drives. The HPT366 controller that came on the BE6 and other Abit motherboards had the same exact problem, and they (supposedly) fixed it with a BIOS update for the controller and driver updates.
Make sure you have the latest VIA busmaster drivers installed.
Yes I know they aren't the same configs at all, but that is probably the case. If the latest drivers don't fix it tell VIA about it.

 

[quique]

I recently built the system, about a month ago, and the hard disks are at most 3 months old. So it's relatively new. The problem started the first time I tried to transfer large files. The comp is running Win98, has generic PC133 mem, The primary master Quantum has an AOpen 24X CDROM slave and the secondary master HD Maxtor has a Memorex 6x2x2 CDRW slave. I will definitely try to make one of the drives a slave drive on the same cable and I will also check on that latest VIA bus driver. I'm using the one that came with my Soyo 6VBA133 motherboard. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

 

[quique]

Ok, this is really weird stuff. I downloaded the latest bus drivers from www.viatech.com and I compared the version of drivers and I did in fact have an older version. Ok, so did that and rebooted and everything seemed fine. I tried to transfer some large files ~50+ mb files and they transfer fine from secondary master (Maxtor) to primary master (Quantum). Then I tried to transfer large files from Quantum to Maxtor. First, the file(s) looked like they were copying, then the comp froze, and started to make a humming sound, sounding like it was coming from HD. After a series of manual shut down and boot up and prewindows HD error checking blue screens I tried to transfer from primary master to secondary master once again. Instead of making that horrible noise there would just pop up an alert window saying that it cannot read from the source. So from secondary to primary it's ok, just not the opposite. Any suggestions???

 

[randypj]

1. What DaddyG was trying to spit out was to get all the other crape off the ide ribbons. Just the hd's, nothing else. This gets you down to basics (finally learned this from my Dad--engineer) and will allow you to eliminate the hard drives as the problem.

2. Hard reboot to SAFE MODE. Go to device mangler and remove any ghosted/non-current devices you have showing. At work, I can always count on the pc's ghosting a couple monitors and an extra floppy, if not more. Hard reboot.

Then, you get to deal with the other crape.

3. If this doesn't do it:
overwrite your explorer.exe (assuming Win98 uses this for Explorer) with a known good version that you have .cab'd on your hard drive--YES, even if it's the same size file.
swap ribbons out
try different RAM/diff slots
I've had problems in the past with "some" 36" /33 cables. Go shorter.

The Memorex is non-DMA which makes being on the same ribbon "problematic" at the best. Actually, a decent, cheap burner. Based on the Philips 3610, I believe. Despite the problems they had with early units, Philips did continually update their firmware--but, I digest.
AND, let us know.
--Randy

 

[Bozo Galora]

just curious:
what does overwriting explorer have to do with hard drives problem?
are you suggesting explorer can be corrupted to the point that a hdd transfer will be interrupted without an error message?

 

[randypj]

Bozo Galora--it may seem weird, but I've overwritten mine at least twice. I specifically remember the first time. I'd been having weird lockups. Always when transferring files. Couldn't figure it out. I thought back to what, if anything had changed. Nothing. 'Cept, I did have that one crash when I was tranferring a week before.

So, I figured it couldn't hurt. Overwrote it and like magic, no problems. My thought is it was corrupted. BTW, both the new and corrupted showed to be the same size.
--Randy

 

[Bozo Galora]

Thanks for reply.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I find things like this interesting.
explorer.exe (in C:Windows) is the prog (176KB) that opens the explorer file. When you click on explorer.exe WHEN YOU ARE IN EXPLORER, you just get another window with everything the same. Right? One is not prompted to overwrite. Do you just "X" out the old one? How did you "overwrite it"? I can't see where this does anything, but I'm open to thoughts.

As far as original poster, I'm beginning to smell EZ-BIOS/MAXBLAST at work here.

 

[medic]

Hey B.G. Now you got me curious
Couldn't you extract and overwrite explorer.exe from DOS?
It's quite the little program though....
I ran Wintop which shows all running programs and of course it shows explorer.exe running...then I proceeded to open "60" copies of explorer.exe...now you would expect 61 running instances of explorer.exe but there isn't, Wintop shows 1 explorer.exe and 60 threads...odd...I expected to see 61 programs. Ctl-Alt-Delete shows 61 "explorer" listings but doesn't give any info whether these are threads or programs. (I believe it only lists programs so it contradicts Wintop)

Another cool thing to me is that as explorer.exe is your interface or desktop, when you run explorer.exe again (from the desktop shortcut or off start)it doesn't give you another desktop or interface obviously, but runs as file manager, it actually starts as explorer.exe /n,/e,c:\ which gives you the file manager view and your saved settings.
One hell of a versatile and powerfull program in 176KB!
I need to get out more..

 

[Bozo Galora]

Hey CRV: Don't know yet - did you see my "thank you for defending me" thread a while back. (Its O.K. man. I cherish those insults. Its just cyberspace. 0's and 1's in the ether).

On that Chessman SCSI two HDD no boot thread (that he never finished) you were prob right on (as usual)- see these:

http://www.stiller.com/cih.htm
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/3652/cih.html
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/virwarn.htm

Check out this neato MBR fixing tutorial:
http://www.datarescue.com/laboratory/partition.htm
Also:
http://www.cs.csubak.edu/~marc/winnt/ntfaq_savilltech.html

still more of the stuff "we" like:
http://www.fsys.demon.nl/dfsee.htm
http://www.win.tue.nl/math/dw/pp/aeb/partitions/index.html

and how about a proggie to open winmail.dat files?
http://www.fentun.com

(Well there goes your weekend. Heh heh)

 

[Bozo Galora]

got the latest Wintop? (1.2)
http://www.softlist.net/cgi-bin/program.cgi?id=1904

 

[randypj]

Bozo Galora--feel free NOT to try it. Geez, bleeding Louise.......

CRV--No, I think I've got ya curious. Yes, you overwrite from DOS. My assumption is that you already had extracted .cab's on your harddrive. Doesn't everyone?

Crape, it was just a suggestion. It doesn't "remember" any system settings or nothin'.

Sorry CRV--not enough sleep, too little time for DiabloII....gotta travel for the 4th and would rather be playin' D2.
--Randy

 

[randypj]

CRV--I think it may have been a post of yours a couple months ago that outlined an elegant way of moving a cloned drive to another system, and, I believe you eliminate a file and force Win9x to find everything again? If not would you know of the post that I am speaking of?

I'll be moving from a VIA to a BX system this weekend, so I definitely want to drop all the junk VIA stuff.
YGM
--Randy

 

[Bozo Galora]

randypj:

easy fellow, I don't have a clue why youre angry.
the insults thingy was 2 weeks ago, not involving you.

P.S. I don't know anyone who has the cab files on their harddrive.
Most people use sys file checker to suck what they need off Win CD.
I guess I have shown my stupidity again, by not knowing I had to use DOS to overwrite explorer.exe. But thats why they call me Bozo, right?

 

[DaddyG]

I just noticed that you are using the VIA drivers. Win98 has great drivers that are marginally faster and much more reliable than the VIA sh$t. If you can totally get rid of the VIA drivers and resort to plain W98 you will have a better place to start.

 

[medic]

B.G.
No I missed that (stuff just flies by here) I tried subscribing to all the threads I get involved with and my inbox blew up!
Some good links there..(another day shot)

Randy
YGM

quique:
Backup!
Run the H.D. man. diagnostic utility to check the drives integrity.
Check DMA on the drives?
Try new cables
Get more ram 64megs is barely enough for W98 and a few programs, especially with well known memory leaks and such there isn't enough memory to do large file transfers. Borrow another 32MB or 64MB stick and try it.
Also run scandisk and defrag, maybe even setup a permanent 200MB swap file.

 

[randypj]

Bozo Galora--Please accept my apologies. Man, sometimes I'm just way too far out there. Maybe I was falling asleep at the keyboard. I'm very sorry. I guess I really do need this vacation.<GRIN>

CRV--YGM. At the bottom is a copy of the instructions. DOH...It was in one of the 40+ folders on my desktop. I wish I knew who the poster was, so I could give kudos.
--Randy

 

[quique]

Ok all, thank you for your comments, even though it went off on a little tangent there, it's all good. I opened up the comp and I made one of the disks a slave and the other the master and on the same cable. I checked it out and it's all working!!! It was kinda weird though because after I booted it up the slave drive wasn't working! But now it's working. It's also kinda weird that data would transfer from one IDE cable to the other. Oh well, thanks once again!