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Windows 7 stops responding while copying large files from the network to USB hard drive.

I have run into an issue transferring large files from a network share to an external USB 2.0 hard drive attached to my Dell E6400 Windows 7 laptop. I have tried this several times using 2 external Seagate hard drives, different USB ports, cables, etc... but continue to have the issue..

The transfer starts and appears to work normally but after about 20-30GB Windows 7 will stop responding properly, the mouse will start skipping around, network activity drops to 0%, and other applications will stop responding but no errors actually come up on the screen. I've left the system as long as 30 min in this state but it never starts copying the files again and requires a reboot to be useful again.

I can unplug the external USB drive and the copy window stays open and the process never actually fails.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

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senad

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TraJohnson

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I'll try that, I remember doing that to address Outlook performance issues in Vista but I don't recall if I ran in on this 7 load.

senad

In Vista when you copied large files over network,network disconnects and copying
stalls.That was the fix.Should probably work in W7 too ....Did not try....

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Nik

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Ravi Agrawal

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TraJohnson

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Thanks for all the replies. It turns out not one but both external hard drives I tried had bad sectors on them. I replaced the drives with a new 320GB Segate in a USB enclosure and I'm able to transfer all 300GB with no issues! I never expected both drives to be bad but sure enough.

Thanks everyone.