Large File Transfers Crashes Windows

[Lorne]

"I added a new video card not long ago that takes a six pin power connection."

Check the heatsinks on your chipsets, make sure there mounted and flat.
or run a monitoring program and watch if your southbridge is over heating during copy.
You may have bumped it during the install of the card.

 

[ronbo613]

Why do you need two copies on the same drive?

Just rearranging some files, moving files from a hard drive that is nearly full to one that has a little more space.

Hmm, I'm leaning towards the board now but it still could be the PSU. Have you tried either a live CD (Linux) and testing with that, as well as trying a transfer to each disk combination, and disconnecting disks to as few a number at a time as possible? I think if the last option made a difference then it still could be the PSU.

I'd definitely test with a linux live cd to see if its a software issue before replacing a motherboard.

I've got Ubuntu on a USB thumb drive ready to roll, I'll play around with that today.

 

[ronbo613]

I'd definitely test with a linux live cd to see if its a software issue before replacing a motherboard.

I ran the computer off Ubuntu on a USB stick. I tried it in the morning when the computer was cold and again this evening after being on all day and large files(35G) transferred around the hard drives quickly and without issue.

I still have some kind of problem, but I don't think it's hardware, at least I hope it's not. Replacing the PSU would not be too bad, replacing the mobo, which would mean almost a new rig, is something I don't want to do right now.

 

[bigboxes]

Is your mobo ~5 years old? They do age. But you did say you didn't have this issue in Linux. :hmm: Have you tried updating the mobo's chipset drivers? Or maybe they were updated recently and need to be rolled back.

Edit: You could have a single drive that is having issues and affecting the whole system. Try disconnecting the drives as mikeymikec has suggested and see if you can isolate your issue.

 

[ronbo613]

Is your mobo ~5 years old? They do age. But you did say you didn't have this issue in Linux. :hmm: Have you tried updating the mobo's chipset drivers? Or maybe they were updated recently and need to be rolled back.

Edit: You could have a single drive that is having issues and affecting the whole system. Try disconnecting the drives as mikeymikec has suggested and see if you can isolate your issue.

Yeah, it's probably about five years old. I know stuff wears out, but I've never had a motherboard die on me. I don't overclock, keep the case well cooled and clean out the dust regularly. I have an Intel 875PBZ that's twice as old that still runs great.

Something is funky, that's for sure. One of the drives is on a PCI SATA expansion card, I've always been a little suspect of it. I've tried a couple of them and I can't seem to find one that works 100%. The drive connected to the PCI card doesn't show up in some disc management software and won't show SMART data in some either, the disc shows up in My Computer and Windows disc utilities. That card may be screwing things up.

 

[mikeymikec]

Did your old graphics card also need a PCIE power connection?

Are you using a specific driver for the AHCI card? Admittedly I've used some cheap ones, but I've always found that msahci is more stable (and yes I use Intel/AMD for the board's own AHCI).

 

[XavierMace]

Something is funky, that's for sure. One of the drives is on a PCI SATA expansion card, I've always been a little suspect of it. I've tried a couple of them and I can't seem to find one that works 100%. The drive connected to the PCI card doesn't show up in some disc management software and won't show SMART data in some either, the disc shows up in My Computer and Windows disc utilities. That card may be screwing things up.

Given you currently have drives spanning 3 controllers and you question one of them, have you considered a higher end RAID controller?

 

[ronbo613]

Did your old graphics card also need a PCIE power connection?

No, and to be perfectly honest, I don't think the PCI-E power connection on the card I have actually does anything.

Are you using a specific driver for the AHCI card? Admittedly I've used some cheap ones, but I've always found that msahci is more stable (and yes I use Intel/AMD for the board's own AHCI).

Yes, I'm pretty sure I am but I will check for updated drivers. I should probably try a newer PCI SATA card, those things are pretty hit and miss.

I always try to upgrade to larger hard drives so I don't need so many, but I always seem to need more storage. I haven't had a computer with one hard drive since Windows 95.

Given you currently have drives spanning 3 controllers and you question one of them, have you considered a higher end RAID controller?

Sure, I've considered it, but the good RAID cards are fairly expensive and I'm pretty much running a JBOD. I need to build myself a server but I never get around to it.

 

[XavierMace]

Meh, $100 on eBay for a good used ServeRAID M1015. Even if you didn't run hardware RAID, at least that gets all your drives onto one reliable controller.

 

[mrjminer]

Run some diags, or pull the extra card out and try it with a couple of drives just plugged into the motherboard. Or, disable it in device manager. You could also check your power options in Windows / BIOS power settings to make sure nothing is being suspended after x amount of time. SFC /scannow wouldn't hurt, either

Also, it can still be HW even if it is working in Linux.

 

[readymix]

voltage drop?

from Asus faq,

This is probably caused by the power fluctuation on the SATA HDD power wire. Some power supplies come with multiple SATA power connectors on one power wire. With this type of wires, when you hot plug the SATA HDD power, a sudden voltage drop may occur on the SATA power wire due to the additional loading from the newly plugged HDD. Operating system would detect this power instability, and execute the self-protection action (BSOD) to avoid further damage to the HDDs. To work around this issue, please use a separate, dedicated SATA power wire for the HDD with OS. This would avoid the SATA power fluctuation on the HDD with OS when you try to hot plug.

 

[ronbo613]

SFC /scannow wouldn't hurt, either

That was one of the first things I did, nothing turned up.

Meh, $100 on eBay for a good used ServeRAID M1015. Even if you didn't run hardware RAID, at least that gets all your drives onto one reliable controller.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of used computer parts on eBay and buying a $100 computer component that usually costs $600 direct from China or Hong Kong does not sound like a good idea to me.

I'm going to ditch the PCI controller card and see how that works.

Thanks to everyone who's provided insight or information, I appreciate it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You've tried un-installing your antivirus software on Windows? That could be causeing the issue, if it's trying to scan large files during copying, and failing over hard on the system.

 

[ronbo613]

You've tried un-installing your antivirus software on Windows? That could be causeing the issue, if it's trying to scan large files during copying, and failing over hard on the system.

Possible, I've got real time scanning on. Don't know why an AV program would be scanning files that have already been scanned and are on the computer, but I'll check it out.

 

[BFG10K]

WIN 7 is VISTA.

The issue you describe reminds me of why I eventually downgraded to XP.

Not for file copying it's not. I routinely perform heavy file copying operations and Windows 7 is just as reliable as XP was.

 

[mikeymikec]

Possible, I've got real time scanning on. Don't know why an AV program would be scanning files that have already been scanned and are on the computer, but I'll check it out.

I would uninstall it completely during testing; in my experience a dodgy security program still causes problems even when "disabled" (possibly because the problem is at the driver level) a good portion of the time.

 

[Quad5Ny]

I didn't read the entire thread as I'm about to leave but recently I had a problem where Windows would hardlock when doing large transfers from one of my drives.

After testing different motherboard SATA ports and different cables it turned out it was my hot-swap bay combined with the ASM106x SATA controller (The Intel PCH SATA controller would only slow to a standstill but the ASM controller would hardlock).

The bay was completely passive and I took it apart to check the traces/solder joints. Everything looked perfect yet somehow still managed to cause problems.

 

[mikeymikec]

I've had quite a few problems with eSATA controllers including ASMedia (even when they're not in actual use). I disable them wherever possible in the BIOS and make sure their drivers aren't installed in Windows.

 

[B-Riz]

I have used RichCopy for large file transfer across the network, no issues.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx

While it may be a controller going blah, I would try RichCopy and see if it still happens.

Updated utility from the creator: http://blogs.technet.com/b/ken/archive/2009/06/10/build-4-0-216-has-been-posted-to-the-microsoft-download-center.aspx