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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments

46 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Anonymous
    2019-04-09T08:21:24+00:00

    I was having a similar issue and wanted to add my experience.

    I had this issue trying to copy lots of files (few hundred GB) from one drive to another and at some point near the beginning the speed would drop to zero bytes/sec and sit there forever. Pausing or cancelling also would sit at 0% and never complete so i had to force abort it. Turns out when it dropped to zero it was trying to copy over a hard linked file (symlink) whose target no longer existed. So once i deleted those files it worked fine. 

    Hope this helps someone,

    Nate

    Was this answer helpful?

    7 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2018-11-19T16:34:29+00:00

    This is a problem for me today as well - Windows 10 on a Surface Pro 4. I don't need to list all the details of what others have tried, because I have tried the same. This seems unfortunate that this forum is not being monitored.

    Was this answer helpful?

    7 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2017-11-06T22:04:03+00:00

    This issue has existed since windows 8 and still has NOT been fixed. It is a file explorer issue and only fix is to use teracopy. I believe since windows 8, RDC (Remote Differential Compression) was feature added that has created this issue and in windows 10 it can only be disabled by 3rd party apps so on by default and cannot be removed. I believe this may be the issue and why it hasn't been fixed as Microsoft will not remove the feature.

    Was this answer helpful?

    7 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2015-08-24T08:26:31+00:00

    It is rather strange. When you do not look to the screen showing the details, then the file transfer is working correct.

    Hope this helps.

    Was this answer helpful?

    6 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  5. Anonymous
    2014-05-02T06:48:29+00:00

    I'm having the same problem. It always happens when copying many files from my PC to my USB 3.0 HDD. I'm using Windows 8.1.

    Was this answer helpful?

    6 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments