8b20 hangs synchronising to USB, can't be killed

[pol098]

I don't know if I have enough information, but: using TC 8 beta 20 under Win7/32, synchronising a directory to a USB drive (something I do often, never had this problem), with about 5000 files and 100MB to copy, TC says "not responding" part way through. Not possible to terminate with Task Manager (just stays doing nothing), not possible to close down machine normally. Sysinternals pskill says process killed, but it's not; switch off. Machine itself is not hung, able to run other processes. After restarting, CHKDSK on USB stick finds no errors.

[sqa_wizard]

What are your settings at "Configuration - Options - Operation - Copy/Delete" ?

[pol098]

Before anything else, I'm not particularly interested in solving a problem of mine (I'll sort it out somehow), but in reporting a possible TC beta problem. Whatever the settings and the state of my drives, nothing should cause the sort of hang I describe.

New information: on later test, CHKDSK came up with errors on the USB flash drive; I don't know if induced by aborting the copy or if there is a fault. There may be a fault, I've had CHKDSK errors before on this USB stick. If I'd had an error message I would have investigated further, but the total hang spurred me to report.

Thanks for response:
"What are your settings at "Configuration - Options - Operation - Copy/Delete" ?"

Not as I remembered them! I thought it was set at default; but actually "use standard copy" is not ticked; Also use big file copy is ticked; 10240 on same disc, 64 on different discs; Use compatibility mode not ticked; USB sticks ticked (but probably does nothing as compatibility mode unticked). Copy+paste via Explorer unticked. I vaguely remember changing them for a temporary purpose and presumably forgot to reset, though everything's been working fine for ages with earlier TC, including big copies (gigabytes to network drive).

Am investigating further, interim report.

[pol098]

following my previous postings: The USB drive is now thoroughly scrambled, don't know if due to the copying problem with TC or a problem with drive itself. So I can't say much about the cause of this problem; the actual cause may be nothing to do with TC. What does remain is that TC 8b20 (and possibly earlier versions) is capable under some circumstance of hanging so badly as to require switchoff, whether due to writing to a faulty destination device or some other problem I cannot say. BTW the drive is 32GB FAT32.

While I doubt I can say how to replicate the problem, at the moment the USB drive has some files with invalid names that I cannot delete in any of the ways I know (I used to edit the directory with a disc editor, but I don't have one which will save the modified directory under Win7). In particular, del \\.\u:\<pathname> doesn't work, nor does del *.* in CMD. Again, this isn't a problem; I'll eventually format the stick and start again. Whether these names were there to begin with and caused the TC hang I don't know.

[ghisler(Author)]

Try using "Check for errors" in the context menu of the drive.

[pol098]

Try using "Check for errors" in the context menu of the drive.

Thanks. Doing this in Windows from Properties of the drive runs very fast and comes up with no errors. Running CHKDSK U: /F repeatedly was very slow and came up with errors every time (they didn't get Fixed properly); now it hangs for tens of minutes at 58%. As I said, there are some files with corrupt names that can't be deleted with the tools I have (I don't have a free binary disc editor which will save its results, and don't need one enough to buy one). There's obviously either something wrong with the drive or file system corruption on it. I'll reformat the drive soon and start again.

Possibly TC was not strictly hung as such, but running exceedingly slowly due to errors (I left it quite a long time, but it sat with zero progress). Still shouldn't require a switch-off. (I once ran Spinrite on a drive with errors and calculated that it would have taken 24 years to complete at the rate it was running, but could cancel the run.)

[ghisler(Author)]

This sounds more like a hardware problem of that drive. Reformatting will probably not help.

[pol098]

... Reformatting will probably not help.

Please everybody, I'm grateful but don't waste any of your time, zero, on helping _me_. I can handle a bad USB stick, and if I couldn't the issue doesn't belong here anyway. The question is: is TC behaving incorrectly?

My original report (TC 8b20 hangs transferring big files in the normal way of things) seems to be incorrect. What seems to be happening is that TC hangs, in the extreme way I reported, in copying to a bad device. The one thing I regret I didn't think to do was to unplug the USB stick, which might have unhung TC (as diagnostic information - I don't care about the memory stick or the, backed up, data). Anyway, my point is that TC can hang irretrievably. This may be thought something that requires to be changed, or it may be considered acceptable if due to a faulty drive.

[pol098]

Followup: formatted USB stick, copied 3GB onto it with TC, no problems. So either the stick had a formatting error which made TC hang and require switching off with the on/off button, or (I think this is less likely as it worked fine after reformat) TC 8b20 corrupted the memory stick and then hung when trying to copy to it.