Maybe.

My computer is deteriorating rapidly, to the point where trying to copy more than a few megabytes from one drive to another, any drive to any other (there are six hard drives in the system: 4 internal, 2 external) causes a lockup. All I/O activity ceases for about 40 seconds, then I can hear the heads do a rather noisy seek, the CPU activity spikes to 100%, and then things will resume for another two or three minutes. Unless (as frequently happens) the program doing the transfer times out with a "Program not responding" error.

Two different backup programs (Microsoft SyncToy, and Karen's Replicator) exhibit this behavior, as does my disk defrag program (Auslogics), as does Windows Explorer.

Occasionally I get the 40-second lockup even when not engaged in heavy disk I/O.

Unless someone can come up with a solution, I may have to Nuke and Repave. I do not want to do that - my "Control Panel --> Programs & Features" has well over 100 items in it, and that's after I've gone through and uninstalled everything I don't use. If I have to, then I will upgrade to Windows 7, 64-bit, which means learning a new operating system. And no, Linux isn't an option for me, of that 100+ selection in Control Panel, I suspect that the majority don't have Linux analogs.

Right now my backups are a mess, since the problem began part way through the backup procedure. I've run these backups many times in the past without problems, and I haven't changed anything other than to add more data to be backed up. Fortunately none of my data is on the system (i.e., C:) drive, just all the applications. My data on the D: drive is solid, my 1-TB F: drive not so much.

The fact that I/O activity on ANY drive causes lockup suggests that there is no single drive causing the problems. Or does it? I guess that if any one drive was doing it, it would be the System or C: drive. Do you see anything scary in the attached picture?

I've been fighting this for two days now and am beginning to become discouraged. I really don't know if it is hardware or software causing the problem.

tanstaafl.

edit: It's not hardware. I should have thought of this before... I went to a DOS prompt and used XCOPY to copy files. It is copying as I write this. It has copied 10 GB without a problem and is still going strong, looks like it is averaging about 60 MB/Sec. Now up to 16 GB copied. 20+ GB as I submit the post.

So, what is borking my disk I/O in Windows, but letting it run full speed in a DOS window?

edit #2 FOUND IT. (I think...)

It looks as though any time I have my Vantec external dock powered up with a hard drive in it the disk I/O for the entire computer goes teats up. Two different hard drives cause nothing but trouble. When the dock is powered down, everything runs like it is supposed to. Of course, since the dock is my major backup tool, it was always on when I was trying to figure this mess out. I strongly suspect that the dock is the problem, not the hard drives themselves.

It's the dock. Or maybe the SATA cable. Hey, maybe the adapter that the cable from the dock plugs into. Maybe the cable between the adapter and the motherboard. Maybe the SATA plug on the motherboard. Tomorrow I'll open it up and re-seat the cable where it plugs into the motherboard, see if that helps. I am not optimistic.

Hmmm... there's also a USB connector on the dock. If it fails to work on USB, that will be a good indication that it is the dock itself, and not any of the other possible things. And if it does work on USB, I'll just run it that way instead of SATA. It doesn't matter if it's a little slower, I run the backups overnight anyway.

edit #3 Yes, works just fine on USB.


db