BSOD copying files from one network drive to another

I was not present at the time. User was copying lots of image files from one network drive to another

"copying lots of image files from one network drive to another" -- Image files can be quite big. You likely overloaded the network connection when you did the copy operation. And if it is a "peer to peer" network rather than a "client server" network (this is likely the case if it is a small network), there wouldn't have been any management of the copy process. I could see that being the cause of the BSOD on the computer where the copy operation was being performed, because all of the data had to pass through that computer in an unmanaged way when it went from one network drive to the other.

• "Client server" means that all network resources are centrally managed.
• "Peer to peer" means that no network resources are centrally managed, but rather are shared directly on the network.

To keep this from happening in the future, you could zip up several of these image files into one ZIP file, thereby making the entire set smaller in size AND reducing the number of files down to one. Then copy one ZIP file at a time. When zipping them up, group them according to size, so that no one ZIP file has too much data in it. (I don't know what the size limit should be; probably no more than 5 GB per ZIP file should prevent another BSOD.)

The files were being copied from an OSX Server share to a SBS 2003 share, using a Windows 7 PC, via a Cisco switch.

joey1211 said:

The files were being copied from an OSX Server share to a SBS 2003 share, using a Windows 7 PC, via a Cisco switch.

Still, my thought is that the massive amount of data caused the BSOD on the Windows 7 PC that did the copy operation.

By zipping the files up: (1) there will be less files to copy, because several files will be in one ZIP file; and (2) the total amount of data being copied will be less, because the ZIP process will compress them down to a smaller size. Image files in particular will shrink a lot from the ZIP process.

Doing these two steps and then trying the copy again, copying one ZIP file at a time, will reduce the possibility of having a BSOD.

If you don't want to go through the hassle of zipping the files, then try copying a few files at a time, rather than all files at one time.

There is the possibility that one of your image files is corrupt and therefore problematic - in other words, copying that particular file could be what is causing the BSOD.

Another thing that might help: Try using Robocopy:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../ee851678.aspx

Robocopy manages the copy process better than the standard drag-and-drop of Windows file manager.

Open a command prompt and type robocopy /? [ENTER] to get more information about Robocopy.