I've got two hard drives, one I use for storage, running WinXP Pro.
I'm trying to move some mp3 files from Drive C to Drive D, which is where
I keep all my music files.
These files are pretty large, 162MB and up.
All was fine, but suddenly now when I try to move them,
this pops up in the system tray:



And the files won't move over to the D Drive.
According to the info in Disk Management, the D Drive capacity is 42.93GB,
and the free space is 23.40GB.
The music folder I'm trying to move them into has 16.5GB of mp3/ogg files in it.
I can move small files over, like jpg, png, native psd, even small mp3's.
Just not these larger files.
And there's no problem moving them from D to C.
Any ideas on what's keeping me from moving these files over,
and what I can do to correct this problem?

What does it say when you move your mouse over the exclamation mark?

It doesn't say anything, and when I click on it, it disappears.
That's one reason I can't figure this out.

You seem to have too little memory (virtual+physical) to fit the file in.
Just increase maximum swap space.

Haha, that would mean he's using the right-click commands "copy" and "paste" to copy 16.5 GB!

Try to use drag-and-drop from one folder to another...

I recall a command called xcopy designed for copying lots of files
with low memory usage and good buffering.

lol...I'm not using cut/copy and paste.
I'm dragging the files from one folder to another.

I think I've found the problem, but I'm not sure what to do about it.
I tried to drag the file over again, but this time I got a "Delayed Write Failed" error message.

There's a program called TotalCopy thats designed to replace the routines Windows uses to drag 'n' drop files. It doesn't replace the cntr+c, cntr+v commands though. I don't know if this will fix your problem, but the program is good at moving large files.

Total Copy 1.1

I don't know what it means, but it sounds worrying. If I were in your shoes, I'd simply copy the files instead of moving thelm, then use the FC file1 file2 /B command to compare the source and destination file, before deleting the source. Because if the writing process is unreliable, there may be copy errors.

Hmmm... I was reinstalling windows on my girlfriend's pc the other day, and got that message after installation too.
I tried lots of stuff, then opened up the box: I found that a corner of the agp-card pcb had perforated the ide cable! One conductor was gone over half a centimetre.

You have a major problem then - dying hardware.

@Pio2001:
Yep...the files corrupt going across so I haven't deleted the originals yet.
Until I can get this problem fixed I'm just gonna keep them on the C drive.

@Patsoe:
I opened the box and checked. Everything looks fine.
My next step, according to MS tech database, is to look at the BIOS settings,
to make sure they are configured to force faster UDMA modes.
This I have no idea how to do.

File corruption on writes... not good. I'd say, backup valuable data before proceeding with checks.
Setting a faster DMA mode shouldn't help - if there's file corruption on slow throughput it probably won't get better with faster throughputs.

After backing up, you may want to get a harddisc health check program at the manufacturer. They're freely available.

Good idea...I'll try that.
Thanks.

Or use SpeedFan to read SMART data - see if something is below threshold.

SMART is a good first indication of component health, but it isn't very accurate in my experience. I've seen only one drive really alerting me with SMART alarms before it died, whereas at least four other drives died without a warning.

Well...I'm back with this problem.
I ran a health check on both disks and got nothing back wrong with either.
I've followed MS's suggestions for the "Delayed Write Error" message,
by making sure the drives were wired with the right cables,
& checked the BIOS to make sure the settings are not configured
to force faster UDMA modes, and everything there is fine.
The next step is to go to the Policies tab under Disk Mangement,
and uncheck write caching, but everything in that tab is grayed out.

I'm at a total loss at what to do now.

You looked at everything -- but did you unplug everything and then plug everything back in.

A few months ago I was having file corruption problems and thanks to the suggestions of CiTay I unplugged everything and then plugged everything back it, and my problem was fixed. A loose connection could create problems.

Yes, I looked at everything, but that's all.
That's a good idea, unplug everything then plug it back in.
I did that with my soundcard one time when I was having a problem with audio,
and it fixed things up.
I'll do that and see what happens.
Thanks.

You wouldnt happen to be using a VIA KT133A chipset on your motherboard, would you? There was a bug in that chipset that caused corruption of files over 100mb when you were trying to copy the file from one device to another. There is a patch / fix for this problem IIRC. Just a thought.......

Yes I am. Actually its the VIA Apollo KT133A.
I can't find the patch @ the VIA website anywhere.
Where can I find this patch?

This link right here explains the problem - http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/686b.php?language=en

You should take these 3 steps in this order, and test after each step to see if the problem has been fixed. You might not need to do all three steps.

1. Update your system BIOS.
2. Install the latest 4-in-1 drivers from VIA, available here - http://downloads.viaarena.com/drivers/4in1...IN1_V449vp2.zip
3. Install George's latency patch, available here - http://207.111.26.5/dl0/vlatency_v020_beta21.exe
Good luck.

Thank you ViPER1313.
I'll let you know how it goes.

Well...I did all that without any problems.
But still no luck...the problem still exists.



I've joined the VIA boards to see if someone there can help too.

We just found the problem.
The D drive is about to die.
So it's time for a new one since it's old and not really
a reliable one to start with (IBM).
But that's what came with the computer, and I'm glad it lasted this long.
Thanks to everyone for their responses.

I'm glad you found the problem before you lost any data. Just wanted to say, this isn't fair at all towards IBM. They had 1 series that was faulty, iirc the 75GXP. After that, people kept reporting dying drives from the 120GXPs, but statistics (like storagereview had plenty before they accidently wiped their hdds) showed that it wasn't any worse than Maxtors D740X or WDs xxxBB.
You can find reliability data at storagereview.com, albeit based on a smaller dataset than they used to have there.

The drive that's going on me is an IBM Deskstar 75GXP.
I didn't mean to imply that all IBM drives were unreliable,
just this particular one that came preinstalled in my computer.
Yep...I guess I'm lucky we caught it before I lost all my data.
Especially all my music files, which have taken a long time to collect.

There is now a firmware update availible for the IBM "deathstar" (75 and 60 GXP) drives.
Storagereview has the whole story and the links over here.

Don't buy that IBM drive too quick. I have had several of their drives go bad over the last 2 years. I am not the only one. In my opinion their drives are now crap and I would ALMOST by a Maxtor first. As I recall, IBM just dropped out of the desktop drive area, gave it over to Hitachi. I think they were just relabeled Hitachi's anyway.

Western Digital and Seagate are the only manufacturers I am aware of that have consistantly good drives. Not the cheapest mind you, just reliable and fast.

I know many people use Maxtor drives. I suggest you ask a few IT professionals what they think of Maxtor and Quantum.

Peace