Windows 7: Corruption in large file transfers to USB drives

gregrocker said:

Pleco said:

gregrocker said:

Have you tried a clean reinstall to see if the behavior continues? I'd clean reinstall without any tweaking or SFV to see the difference.

As a last resort you could also try a Repair Install, but if you have corruption in the SFV program or from tweaking it might let it back through.

Tips for getting a baseline purrfect reinstall - use the ones which apply: re-install windows 7

I have already tried a complete fresh install on a separate hard drive but the same thing occurs. I have never done any tweaking on my Windows 7, I left it on default settings. As for SFV, I downloaded a fresh copy of Quicksfv each time so I doubt it was corrupted itself. I have been using Quicksfv for over a decade now and it has never let me down.

But how long have you used SFV on Win7? If you've reinstalled to the same problem, then I'd try running for awhile without it. In fact I would not use any file copying program or anything like it at all until you elminate this as causing this as it is otherwise unheard of in Win7.

You should also wipe your HD of all code before trying reinstall as Infection or other corruption cannot be ruled out yet.

I have been using Quicksfv on Windows 7 RC for half a year with absolutely no problems. Once I moved to Windows 7 Retail is when first saw this happen. Quicksfv is NOT a file copying program, I only use Windows explorer for copying files. All it does is create a separate text file with a CRC32 checksum or MD5 of the file.

Infection and corruption of the OS has been ruled out, if you were to read my later posts, I have already stated at least 3 times that I have used a separate hard drive to install Windows 7 on.

Here's some people with the same problem:

Files corrupt after copy to usb hard disk

Maguscreed said:

I actually tried testing this myself on a video I had. 9 gigs of video copied over. Reported as corrupted. I played the video start to finish. There was not so much as one tiny sound hitch or out of place pixel in the entire video. If corruption occurred it was not anything that could be detected by me or the media player.

Thank you, finally someone who understands what I'm experiencing .

Some of the files I'm backing up are important database files, so I can't have any corruption in them at all. And opening them up to check every bit of information would take forever.

I will second what Maguscreed posted: I do routinely copy large video files (starting from 1.1GB up to 8GB) onto various USB media - USB drives and external hard drives. I have never seen any problem - the videos are perfectly playable before, after, and on the USB media (basically, I never watch any video on my PC, I just copy the files onto one large USB stick, plug it into my Blu-Ray player and watch on the big screen).

My question to the OP is, what are other signs of corruption apart from your using the Quicksfv software? Were your videos rendered unplayable or various artifacts introduced? Were iso files corrupted, meaning burning software would not recognize them? Same thing with compressed archives? Basically these are the large files types that come to mind. You keep referring to the Quicksfv results, but for example my personal experience and possibly that of many others is that we do copy large files through USB, see no ill effect whatsoever, but never "check" file integrity with special software, such as Quicksfv (of which I have frankly not even heard before). Maybe this program just gives you false results?

My two cents.

Pleco said:

Maguscreed said:

I actually tried testing this myself on a video I had. 9 gigs of video copied over. Reported as corrupted. I played the video start to finish. There was not so much as one tiny sound hitch or out of place pixel in the entire video. If corruption occurred it was not anything that could be detected by me or the media player.

Thank you, finally someone who understands what I'm experiencing .

Some of the files I'm backing up are important database files, so I can't have any corruption in them at all. And opening them up to check every bit of information would take forever.

I think you misinterpreted this post. I highlight what I see as key phrases.

Did you ever try any other software instead of Quicksfv?

Try copying with a 3rd party tool like teracopy.

unifex said:

Pleco said:

Maguscreed said:

I actually tried testing this myself on a video I had. 9 gigs of video copied over. Reported as corrupted. I played the video start to finish. There was not so much as one tiny sound hitch or out of place pixel in the entire video. If corruption occurred it was not anything that could be detected by me or the media player.

Thank you, finally someone who understands what I'm experiencing .

Some of the files I'm backing up are important database files, so I can't have any corruption in them at all. And opening them up to check every bit of information would take forever.

I think you misinterpreted this post. I highlight what I see as key phrases.

Did you ever try any other software instead of Quicksfv?

I have most of my large files compressed with WinRAR to make them smaller. When I run the Test function it fails and reports at least one corrupted file. Yes I have tried other programs like SFV Checker and RapidCRC.

did you check your ram? Maybe there is some bad block that is causing problems?

Phenom78 said:

did you check your ram? Maybe there is some bad block that is causing problems?

Yes, with Memtest86+ for more than 24 hours.

You still did not answer the basic question - did you see any other signs of corruption apart from those test results?

I understand that it might be time consuming to check that every time you copy a file, but once or twice - it's definitely worth it. You do realize that most people copy large files without any problem, but never run any tests to "confirm" it. If I copy a video on my USB stick and it plays without a hitch on my Blu-Ray and at the same time a test will report it as corrupted - I will simply discard the testing software as useless.

unifex said:

You still did not answer the basic question - did you see any other signs of corruption apart from those test results?

I understand that it might be time consuming to check that every time you copy a file, but once or twice - it's definitely worth it. You do realize that most people copy large files without any problem, but never run any tests to "confirm" it. If I copy a video on my USB stick and it plays without a hitch on my Blu-Ray and at the same time a test will report it as corrupted - I will simply discard the testing software as useless.

Scroll up a bit and you'll see I already answered that I compressed some files with WinRAR and when I run the test function it fails and reports at least one file was corrupted and cannot be extracted. This confirms my data was corrupted on the external and can't be used. I used several other checking programs as well. My files are not videos, I can't play them with a video player. Neither are they ISO images I can burn and verify.

I always check the integrity of my files when I back them up to any external source, and have been doing so for the last 15 years. This is the first time I have run INto this problem that's not related to hardware defects since its ONLY occurs on Windows 7. Xp, Linux, and even OSX copies large files absolutely fine without a hitch.

You say testing software is useless? So how exactly do you test the integrity of your files then? What do you tell your boss when you were too lazy and felt there was no need to do a simple integrity check and you just lost months of work due to corrupted files and you can't meet the project deadline?