Windows File Copy Hell 2
By Lawrence
Since the introduction of Windows 7, there is this interesting bug that keeps annoying people everyday with no real solution provided by Microsoft. Will explain what it is and how to deal with it.
In A Nutshell
If your computer has the following,
1. Windows Vista, 7 (and at least early versions of Windows 8)
2. 64-bit
3. more than 4G of RAM
4. multiple cores (4 or more)
then when you copy files from one USB drive to another you will likely experience random disconnect of one of the drives. You would not know that one of the drive is disconnected. Windows would hang up, report to you files missing, not recognized, etc. Worse yet, you have to turn off the drive to force Windows to recognize the disconnect and sometimes reboot the computer is necessary.
It does not matter whether you have the best hardware you can buy, Windows will just fail at random times.
This does not happen to the 32-bit versions, nor in Windows XP, 2000, etc.
This also rarely happens to 64-bit versions if you have up to 4G RAM only.
Root of the Problem
The USB driver for 64-bit Windows somehow not working as it should be when the computer has a lot of RAM.
The problem is there all along and Microsoft never fix it.
As of today this problem still exists even with all the latest updates from Microsoft.
Solutions / Workarounds
The file copy utility I mentioned last time cannot fully resolve this problem although it can make it happen less frequently.
If you have access to an older computer with Windows XP, then just plug the USB drives there and do the copying with the older computer. Just remember to install the file copy utility mentioned above to speed things up. Problem solved.
If you do not have access to an old computer, you need to copy the files from the USB drive to the internal hard drive first, and then copy the files from the internal drive to the other USB drive. I know it sounds stupid and a waste of time, but you do not have a choice.
