Hello everyone, first of all here are my PC specs:

AMD X2 4200+
2GB DDR2 PC-533 Ram
Nvidia Geforce 8800GT 512MB
Allied 450wat PS with 18amps on 12v rails
Hard Disk one: 250GB Seagate ST325082 4AS SCSI Drive mounted on Master SATA 1 controller
Hard disk two(the problematic one): 320 GB Samsung HD322HJ SCSI drive mounted on SATA 1 controller Slave (was mounted on SATA 2 Slave before)
TSST-corp CD/DVD writer TS-H552L ATA mounted on IDE Channel 1.

Now to the issue at hand:
This pc was originally the HP pavilion a1540n, bought back in 2006. Everything in it was from HP except for the Graphics card, the Power supply and the Samsung Hard Drive.

I was running XP until a few weeks ago when I decided to upgrade to Windows 7. My Windows XP was installed on the original seagate drive, so I decided to install Windows 7 on my newer Samsung drive. The first time I installed Windows 7, it hanged up while doing the step of "Expanding windows files" some where at around 12%.

I restarted and tried again, this time it hanged at 32%, the time after that at 20%... I decided to try a different partition on my old seagate hard disk, and voila, it installed without any problems. I thought that is that.

Unfortunately it was not. Apparently, when I ran Windows7 finally, any time Windows 7 has to WRITE something to my Samsung Hard drive, it hangs my computer entirely (even the num lock stops working), but at random stage of the copying process. However, Windows 7 is happy to read from the hard drive no matter how large the file is.

The first thing that came to my mind was a bad sector. I decided to back everything up and run a surface disk check on my Seagate, NO bad sectors found...

I decided to use spinrite and check the hard disk before windows 7 boots, and still no bad sectors found in two different tools...

Finally I used an Ubuntu Linux live CD, and lo and behold there are no issues whatsoever when it copies tens of gigabytes worth of data TO the Samsung Hard Drive....

I formatted my samsung drive, put it as my sole drive and removed all other drives, tried to install windows 7... it still hung up.

SUMMARY:
So to summaries, it is clearly an issue specific to Windows 7 and my Samsung Hard Disk. The issue is specifically noticed when I try to copy large files to my samsung hard disk under windows 7. Other operating systems including windows XP and Ubuntu have no problems performing the same tasks... my other seagate hard disk DOES NOT exhibit the same hanging up issue... or any other issues for that matter.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated...

CONFIGURATION problem.

Can you please elaborate?

Seems it's not the HDD - didn't see it so i't guessing only. Revise PC config / SATA mode AND check for need of specific SATA controller drivers during OS install.

Well, when I disconnected everything except the samsung hard disk, and tried to install windows 7 on it directly, it still hung up. I did not see anything during the beginning of windows 7 installation referring to SATA controller driving installation.

Well it seems I have found the culprit...

I disabled the "Writing Cache" option under the policies tab for the Samsung Hard disk by accessing device manager and opening the properties of that hard disk. So far the Samsung Hard Disk is working flawlessly with no hickups or hang ups...

Still I'd like to know why this problem is only happening in windows 7? And how much is my hard disk performance going to suffer without the writing cache enabled? It seems to be an issue only with my Samsung, not with my Seagate...

I did a few more tests, and the performance hit with the writing cache disabled is quite enormous. The transfer speeds went down from an average of 55-60MB/sec to 15-18MB/sec...

I still don't know why my system hangs when I transfer large files with the writing cache enabled. It was enabled in XP and had no problems like these. In fact XP is installed on it right now and it is working fine.

I wonder why Windows 7 just hates my Samsung...any ideas would be appreciated.

Ask Samsung....

The plot thickens...

I looked at my SATA controllers, and apparently they were Nvidia SATA controllers because my main board is a modified ASUS for HP. It's an Nvidia Nforce 410 chipset. The drivers for the SATA controllers were written in.... 2007.

I looked at nvidia and got the most recent nforce drivers which was released in October 2009. Anyway I updated my drivers, turned the writing cache back on.

Now, instead of the computer hanging up ENTIRELY while copying, it hangs up the same way for about 5-10 seconds, with nothing responsive, and then it goes back again to being responsive and resumes copying. This happens more often when I copy a large number of small files than when I copy one single large file of the same size.

At least now my PC does not hang up entirely, but still what could the nForce drivers do that would improve the situation?

I think I finally got it. I disabled the "Command Queuing" in the SATA controllers under device manager for the Samsung Hard disk, and re-enabled the writing cache on it. Now it is transferring at high speeds without any hangups so far, after copying around 25GB worth of small and large files.

So I think the final verdict is that i has something to do with command queuing. Is it due to an issue with the nForce drivers themselves or is it an issue with the Hard Disk drivers is beyond me, but at least, if anyone gets a similar problem like I did, try disabling the command queuing, and if it fails try disabling the writing cache before you go on a backup frenzy and format the drive with low level dos tools...

The last issue is that it seems Windows 7 enables command queuing and writing cache immediately the moment it tries to install by default, so it seems there is no way around the issue if this is your only hard disk and you need to install windows 7 on it. Your best bet is to install windows 7 on something else and then fix the settings when you run windows 7.

~Cheers.

Congratulations.

In hindsight, I notice lots of Google hits for "NCQ" and "NVIDIA", from various forums.

That's true. In fact some of them exhibit almost the same syptoms like this one here (four years ago!):

http://forums.hexus.net/help-technical- ... again.html

I guess it is long standing issue.