I have an external hard drive. I can transfer small files onto it fine, but if I try to transfer a larger file it just freezes on the screen where it counts down the time left to transfer and won't count down any more.
I have formated it and converted it back and forth from Fat to NTFS. It is in NTFS and still does the same... I have been able to transfer large files over in, but in the last few days it hasn't let me. It is a Seagate Free Agent Go Flex 1TB. Maybe 3 weeks old.
Any ideas?
I hate seagates, especially externals. I've had nothing but trouble from them. Seagate was no help, and basically said I was lying. I took mine out of their cases (which suck and have very poor firmware), and I've done some modifications that keep the drives workable, but they are still unreliable and report good transfers of large files that actually failed, and they are randomly inaccessible for long periods of time, and randomly unmount themselves (which usually requires a power cycle or two to bring them back online). The only way to properly transfer files is to transfer them, then transfer back and confirm the file. Then I know the seagate has a good copy.
To rule out other problems (like windows, which always seems to screw up simple things), download a linux live CD. I recommend Ubuntu (10.04). Then just boot from CD and then try transferring the same files and see what happens. With mine the problems are OS-independent.
But I recommend you sace yourself some time and buy a decent hard drive from newegg (I like WD, but I would avoid the AFD drives, as they can be very confusing to set up, with no real gain). I know people who have good experiences with the seagate hard drives that are sold individually (not in case combos), but they left a bad taste in my mouth with their externals, so I don't do business with them. Read reviews as there are a few models of drives from certain other brands that have firmware issues that cause failed file transfers, and they refuse to fix it. Then get a good rosewill case, like the RX-358-U3B (or the slightly cheaper RX-358. The RX-358-U3B is the first Rosewill case I bought, and I haven't purchased a case from another manufacturer since. The thing is invincible and keeps even hot drives well within operating parameters for temperature. Or you can get a dual bay one like this R2-JBOD. I have one as well, and it is very easy to hot-swap drives with it. It also has very good ventilation.
