Vista copying files errors

[ProMind]

I have noticed that a lot of people are experiencing problems with Vista
copying files.



I first noticed the problem when I tried to do a backup to a USB disk and
thought it was USB related.



Now I have been looking around and I see the same kind of problems
everywhere (although some of them don't look like file problems).



I have now been testing this for a while and have found at least 10 ways to
make a Vista copy go wrong.



It is not USB, DVD, CD or whatever related, it can happen by copying a file
from one partititon to another on the same disk. The only thing that seems to
be consistent is that there has to be an actual disk write (and not just an
update to the TOC of the disk) and the amount of data must be relatively
large.



This points probably to a memory leak problem which would explain why the
error is so erratic. I have found somewhere that Vista actually uses a
compression algorithm when copying data. This may be a lead, because I can
force the error quite quickly by copying JPEG's of MP3's (files that are
already compressed).



But what is worse, I checked some backups I made and more than half of them
are corrupt ... . And I didn't get any error messages !



Even copying a file to a file server is not reliable ...



I think that a lot of issues (installation probs, program errors etc) are
actually all symptoms of the same problem.



So I would like to ask anyone who sees this and has experienced a similar
problem to post a reply plse, because this could really be a problem !!



Thanks

 

[Chuck]

One of the first things to do when copy operations don't work properly is to
disable write caching.
If this eliminates the problem--fine, but it did not identify the exact
cause.
Usually it come back to some sort of a hardware issue that may be addressed
by such things as updated chipset drivers, moving hard drives to a different
port, etc.

 

[ProMind]

Thanks for the reaction Chuck, and at first I was thinking in the same line,
these issues were present in XP to.

With Vista however the problem goes further, you can get inconsistencies on
almost any level including copying to two partitions on you standard HD,
copying across a network etc.

Since my last post Microsoft released a patch at :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938979

Altough I got an error when installing it, after a reboot the main problem
seemed to have dissappeared, but copying data is still very slow compared to
XP.

And I would still advise extreme caution, because not every failed copy
operation gives an error message, some just skip files (when copying a
folder).

 

[Seneschal]

Sadly there is no solution yet, Microsoft has not resolved it satisfactorily
yet.
It appears there are many variants on this problem, mine involves my USB
drive and C:. There's a whole thread going on TechNet several hundred pages
long since February!
The only way I could get around it was to move the files a few chunks at a
time. I suspect it has something to do with permissions/UAC programming bug.

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1358057&SiteID=17