Large file transfer stops working when using USB hard drive and Windows 7 64 bit, Intel chipset

Good to know I'm not the only one that's been getting this.

I first noticed when I got curruption in HD Video files and so started checking the source and copies etc and discovered the MD5 hash didn't match etc.

The only nVidia motherboard I ever had I had problems with the hard drive controllers and certain drives needing Native Command Queuing disabling otherwise it would currupt the HDD's. :p

It's strange that Microsoft believed that this issue was an nVidia related issue when it seems to be much more routed in the OS. I'm not a software engineer (although I am a Systems Engineer) so I could only guess at the cause but it deffinatly seems related to Windows 7 x64 and 4Gb+ RAM. It's clearly not an issue with just nVidia USB controllers as I have Intels on both "issue" machines and also one has the NEC PCI card in too and that had the same issues. I am wondering if it's some buffer that is bigger when you have more RAM and so affects the larger files that might fill that buffer when it gets currupted.

I just can't point the finger at the USB enclosures cos I have so many and they all do it.

Hopefully Microsoft take note and look into this. It's extremely important nowadays to fix this as more and more people will be using x64 Windows 7 and more RAM not to mention the increased file sizes now we have HD Video etc.

Just to let people know I have now tried after installing Service Park 1 for Windows 7 x64 and the problem still exists so sadly the Service Pack doesn't help. Really need this fixing as it's a nightmare having to use my Laptop (with x86 Windows 7 and 2Gb RAM) to copy large files to USB (over the network from the problem machine) or CRC check everything.

I think it's reasonable to want to have confidence in the data transfers. :P

I still need to do some testing on this but I have switch my USB HDD to "Optimised for Faster Performance" and I haven't been able to make it fail a file yet. As I said I need to carry on testing more but as soon as I turned that option back to the normal "Optimised for Safe Removal" I had currupted files again.

To follow up my above post I may have found a fix/workaround for my USB hard drive curruption issues and this might be the fix to your problems too.

I have gone to the properties of the USB HDD in Device Manager and then to the Policies tab and have set the device to "Better Performance" as opposed to the default of "Quick Removal". BE AWARE: you must now make sure you do safe removal before unplugging the device or you risk data loss (no big deal to me as I always did safe removal anyway).

This strangely seems to remove all curruption issues but must be done on every USB HDD as it is a policy for that device and not all USB HDD's. Once set on that PC it should remain set for future use.

I have tried and tried over and over with 27Gb Ghost files and various other random sized files and I cannot get a single one to fail CRC checks meaning they are 100% identical and no curruption has occured. These tests were performed on my 2 "problem" PC's both with x64 Windows 7 (Pro & Enteprise) and 4GB RAM. They are different machines (ie different motherboards and CPUs etc).

I have no idea what the root cause of the problem is (although it seems only to occur in x64 Windows with 4GB+ RAM) but I hope this info may help you guys sort your issues too until MS issue a fix (hopefully).

Hi,

I have exactly the same type of Laptop as you and exactly the same problem as you!

I think that this is hardware issue rather then software.