File transfer of large files suddenly stops

Anonymous
2013-08-14T21:13:39+00:00

Dear community and Microsoft support team,

since the release of Windows 8, I'm experiencing a strange issue on my SATA3 1TB HDD (I can specify the exact model if needed), running in AHCI mode.

When copying or moving larger files (starts with files of about 50 MB or more), the file transfer suddenly stops - the transfer rate goes down to 0 bytes/s.

I can't even pause or cancel the progress. The button then just grays out and I can only kill the explorer.exe to get this file task away (it stays there - and if I start another action it just gets joined in the file tasks window below the frozen task.

Here's an image. You can nicely see the sudden stop of the file copy action.

On the left side the progress just froze. It will stay like that _forever_. I tried waiting 2 days because the computer was running anyways. Nothing happened.

On the right side I tried to cancel it, but the buttons just gray out and the label says "Cancelling" - this will also _never_ happen. The other controls react normally to user input (e.g. hiding the details), but the buttons are disabled _forever_. The only way to get rid of this frozen task is to kill explorer.exe.

  • I experienced this problem on my and another pc in my old home.
  • I experienced it with different fresh and old Windows 8 installations on my current PC (very annoying after copying files back on a fresh Win8 install - it freezes even there).
  • It doesn't matter if this happens on local disks or over the network.
  • It doesn't matter if details are shown or not.
  • I also experienced this on Windows 8.1 Preview on my laptop.

Thanks for any help in advance. If you need additional details, feel free to ask me.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-10-01T00:43:41+00:00

    To solve this question, you'd better check the partition of your HDD in advance. The Windows built-in tool CHKDSK can help you to do this operation. if you are not familiar with the command prompt, you can also check partition and fix errors with third party software. if there has bad sectors on your HDD, fix it and you can use your HDD normally。

    Nope, my SSD is brand new I've ran a CHKDSK command on it no issues, the problem is Windows Explorers file transfer this issue has preceded since Windows 8 from what I've researched and still exists in Windows 10, you would think Microsoft would've fixed this issue by now but they haven't yet. Here is what happens, Windows explorer will transfer small files just fine but as soon as you transfer multitudes of files like i.e. i can transfer 1-4 files at a time but once in a while, If i  do more than that the transfer speed suddenly drops down and halts its transfer. Like you i thought it was a possoble failing or corrupted drive but it wasn't, i did some research and found multiple people experiencing the same issue since Windows 8, so I tried a third party file explorer called One Commander and the transfers are just fine even for big/multiple files.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-09-09T19:46:27+00:00

    The same issue with Windows 10 I'll be transferring large files then the transfer speeds dip down to 0Mbps and stops transferring sometimes i will transfer 2 at a time or 1 and that seems to help but if Windows is having this issue since 8.1 then this is a huge problem.

    If anyone else is having this issue download a file manager called Commander you can get it off file hippo it's two windows system so y9ou can access your data from the main drive in one panel and have another drive or folder open in the other panel. Seems to work better than windows own file transfer until they fix this. You can find Commander on Filehippo. or try One Commander from the Windows Store.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-07-04T04:06:24+00:00

    I have the same problem. If anyone has linux, does this problem still persists ? 

    Please tell if it doesn't.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-04-09T12:46:19+00:00

    I think is an issue with the hard drive.  I just tried copying the large file (12.4GB) to a different HDD and had no issues. Everything on the problematic drive is backed up, so I'm going to reformat to see if this solves the issue.  Will reply back.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-04-09T12:40:03+00:00

    Unfortunately, does not work for everyone as I just tried this...no go.

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