Windows 7: Issues when creating or copying large files in Win 7 Pro x64

Hello Everyone,

First post here. I assembled a new pc back in September and decided to go with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. I do my best to research problems before asking for help but this one has totally got me. I installed the free version of Macrium for imaging and I noticed early on that it could not successfully verify the images that I created. Everything else seemed to be working normally so I set the issue aside thinking it was just a software quirk. The system has experienced some bsod's but the vast majority of these went away after updating the driver for the onboard graphics.



I finally got around to reading the Macrium documentation about how the verification works and how to confirm the results and now I'm concerned about data integrity on this machine. Copying large files from the cmd line with the /v option throws an error, copying at the cmd line and running FC /B to compare the files yields inconsistent results, a comparison of the same two files will pass FC one time and fail the next. Memory passes the Windows memory test, I'm going to run memtest86 overnight to see if it finds anything. I have read where there are some Win 7 64 issues copying large files to external usb drives but my drives are internal sata drives.

The system includes the following, nothing has ever been overclocked. The only tweaks were ssd optimizations such as turning off restore. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated, i'm just about ready to start swapping hardware.

ASUS P8Z77-V LK (Bios Revision 0908)
Intel I7 3770K
Onboard GPU
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
8GB (2 x 4) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 (CMX8GX3M2B1600C9)
Samsung 830 SSD
WD Caviar Black 2TB
Plextor PX-L890SA
Corsair HX750

Hello cway and welcome to Seven Forums.

Apparently the copying of large files has been an ongoing problem. A quick Google search showed numerous issues ranging from slowdowns to complete freezes. Two possible solutions involve TCP auto-tuning or using a third party tool like TeraCopy.

Problem copying large files

I'm not sure how, or if, this relates to Macrium.

Thank you for your reply,

I have followed the forum for some time and have really learned a lot from everyone here, it's a great place to learn. This is an odd issue though, most things that I find online concern copying large files to or from external usb drives or over a network. My testing is primarily on internal sata drives, a Samsung 830 ssd and a wd caviar black 2tb. Most of my large files (over 1gb) are mpg's from my pvr, funny thing is they all still seem to work properly. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem isn't with the create or copy but with generating the hash that I believe is used to verify the files. It's almost like, if the machine has a problem this serious why isn't it crashing or why am I not finding files that no longer work? I am going to let memtest86 run overnight and see if that provides any clues. I may just replace the memory and see if that helps. I will post what I find. Thank you again for taking the time to reply.

Curtis

You may be on to something. Be interesting to learn what you find out.

Allowed Memtest86 to run overnight. I checked on it after a little over seven hours and it was running fine and showing zero errors. When I checked it again four hours later something had happened but I'm not sure how to interpret it. Please see the attachment and let me know thoughts on it. Thank you.

Curtis

Is memory even involved when copying a file directly from a drive to a drive or partition to partition ?

A have copied large movie files, 50 gigs, and never had an issue.

Likewise, I have zipped up a bunch of virtual machines 46 gb and had no problem on 64 bit Windows 7. All my images are from Macrium and end up on an images drive on this machine copied across the network from the other machines 32 and 64 bit Windows 7.
1 of the images from my other PC is 92 gb (ouch) and that was copied with no apparent problems?

Are the SATA cables off good quality and if the SSD supports 6GBs do the cables? If you had cables rated at 3GB max that MAY cause a weird issue like this due to the cable not having a high enough frequency response to the higher data rate. Sounds hogwash but why would they rate cables otherwise?? I know they are supposed to downshift to the lower rate but what if it did not.

Thanks, that is a good point, this is my first experience with sata drives. The sata cables are the ones included with the motherboard (Asus P8Z77-V LK) and are advertised as 6Gbs.

Another test...

This morning I used Macrium to create an image of the C: drive (Samsung 830) onto an external usb hard drive. I then moved the external hard drive to an older pc (Dell GX240 running XP Pro). The copy of Macrium installed on the Dell had no issue verifying my image, I ran verification twice and it passed both times. I am beginning to wonder if this is an issue with Macrium or with Windows 7 64 itself. Here's an excerpt from the Macrium Knowledge base (Understanding Image Verification Failures (Verification))...

"When an image is created each block of data (generally 64K but may be larger depending on the partition size) has an MD5 hash created after it is read from the disk and before it is written to the image file. This hash value is saved in the index of the image file. When the file is read back the hash value is recalculated and compared with the original hash in the index. Any discrepancy between the two values indicates that the image file is corrupt or cannot be read back reliably."

If I am understanding this correctly, the verification process reads each individual block within the image file, calculates the MD5 hash and compares it with the original MD5 hash that is stored within the index section of the image file. So if this is how it works it makes it look like Win 7 64 was able to calculate the MD5 from the original file correctly during the imaging process but for some reason cannot create a corresponding MD5 during the verification.

I'm not ruling hardware out yet but am keeping an open mind and looking for clues. My thanks to those who have replied and thanks in advance to anyone who can shed further light on this issue!