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Question
Thursday, January 7, 2016 1:53 PM
I am trying to copy large .pst files (3 Gb to 7 Gb in size) from an external 2TB ioSafe drive (USB 2.0) to an internal hard drive (2TB WD Black) on my newly "upgraded" Windows 10 x64 desktop PC. Both hard drives have at least 50% free space. The problem is I keep getting this error: "the semaphore timeout period has expired [121]".This only happens when copying multi GB size files - smaller files, in the 50 MB range copy just fine. The external drive is directly connected to my PC via USB 2.0 and is NOT on a network.
thanks for the help.
All replies (5)
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 8:29 AM âś…Answered
Hi,
Please run CHKDSK /r command to check the disks both of your USB and destination disk:
Check your hard disk for errors in Windows 7
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2641432
Note: This command also applied to Windows 10.
Alternatively, consider to zip the large file and then transfer it.
In addition, please refer to this similar thread:
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help, and unmark the answers if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected].
Thursday, January 7, 2016 6:07 PM
Seen a couple of reports of semaphore timeout on this forum and searching it has been issue in many different windows versions for different situations. So no clear fixes I would say.
This post Error 0x80070079 windows 7 x64 win7 - When trying to copy large files to USB. The semaphore timeout period has expired. Please HELP!!!!!!!! has an interesting purposed solution to me, basically remove all the usb drivers for the device (and other things apparently) to remove a corrupt driver and start again. So have a read of that and perhaps a look at something like USBDeview with its uninstall devices options and \ or device manager and see if any of that will help.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 3:05 AM
Hi, I removed the USB drive from within Device manager and then Windows reinstall the USB driver. Unfortunately, I still have the problem.
Thanks, anyway.
Ben
Saturday, April 8, 2017 9:12 PM
I'm guessing you're still having this issue? I am guessing so because until today, I was having the issue when using USB 3.0 based ICYBOX 2.5" enclosures, and Microsoft seemingly have no knowledge of it, or how to fix it. They coded the error purely as an exception handler without a fix.
Here's what caused the problem for me (maybe even Microsoft can start to use this as advice for future questions regarding this error) is that when using an external enclosure, often enough now they are of a screwless design and are much slimmer than in the past due to this. This can cause problems in that if the logic board so much as gets close to the enclosure, it can short out. Seemingly this doesn't damage the drive, but it does cause semaphore timeout period has expired errors, in addition to random drive disconnects from the USB interface (likely to prevent HDD damage).
The fix is as simple as applying an anti-static surface completely over the logic board of the HDD to prevent direct access to the enclosure by the drive. Drives by IcyBox from Germany come with a plastic sheet with a thin strip of 3M adhesive on one edge to prevent it sliding. Ensure your protective sheet is also fixed in place (try some insulation tape and paper to cover the logic board if you don't have any specific anti-static plastic since paper doesn't conduct electricity).
Microsoft's current official answer on this, is that it is caused by filenames being too long to be transferred, and to reduce the filename length. This, however isn't the case, at least not in all situations. In fact, the last I knew, this problem had a special error code of it's own, where it specifically states that the filename is too long.
I know this fixed it for me, and that filename length has absolutely zero relevance because I moved the same files which were having the issues afterwards, completely unchanged, and received zero errors and a constant 38.7 MB/s transfer speed over USB 3.0 on a spinning HDD. Prior to this fix, the speed would run at 10-20MB/s, then drop to 0, sometimes it would fluctuate repeatedly, or plain fail at 0 and give the semaphore error.
Hope this helps.
Monday, January 14, 2019 9:43 AM
Hi,
The problem comes up with SSDs in a USB case which are not SSD - and thus not TRIM - aware. You end up using up all space, which is never freed in the background on the SSD, since the deleted blocks are never TRIM'd.
I had this issue with an external USB-SSD which I used for lab Virtual Machines. I later on deleted most VMs (except for one) and thought I'd just be able to use it that way, with - seemingly - lots of free space again, but on a larger file copy, I eventually always ended up locked up on the above mentioned semaphore timeout.
The only workaround, for the time being, was to Quick Format the drive (I didn't actually need the contents).
The solution would probably be, buying an SSD-aware external USB case with TRIM support, obviously.
- Jonas