Solved Windows 11 copy error invalid function error:1

I do a backup once a week in Win 11 (build 26200.7462) of all my partitions as its the only OS that has decent programs like Macrium reflect and Hasleo Backup Suite.

I copy the backup images from external hard drive A to external hard drive B and verify the copy with teracopy. But recently some of the copies have been failing to write to the HDD, the error is failed to write error:1 in terracopy.

So I decided to see if it was terracopy at fault and copied a 51gb image using Explorer in Win 11 and it got to about 62% and said MS-DOS error. More testing from command line I tried xcopy which seemed to copy the file but when doing a FC /B in terminal it said the original was larger.

So then I tried robocopy to copy the file and it got to about 81% and said Invalid Function re-trying.

This doesn't happen in Linux with the same hardware. At first I thought the disk was on its way out with bad blocks. But copying the file in Linux completes successfully and the hashes match. Running a FreeFileSync comparision says no differences.

Is this a Windows problem with the copy function? Any ideas?

banger said:

some of the copies have been failing to write to the HDD

Click to expand...

Do you have a friend who can lend you an external USB SSD drive just for test purposes? If that works okay then I suspect it is your HDDs that have a problem. At least it won't cost you anything to test it out.
Although your HDDs work with Linux maybe Linux works differently than Windows 11. Just guessing there.

Are you using the same USB port all the time? Maybe try another port?

wiganken said:

Do you have a friend who can lend you an external USB SSD drive just for test purposes? If that works okay then I suspect it is your HDDs that have a problem. At least it won't cost you anything to test it out.
Although your HDDs work with Linux maybe Linux works differently than Windows 11. Just guessing there.

Are you using the same USB port all the time? Maybe try another port?

Click to expand...

Yes same ports in Win 11 and Linux and same hardware. I have 2 USB3 docks and 4 HDDs. Once a week I backup to HDD A and then use teracopy to copy the images to the other 3 HDDs. Randomly it will fail. But works fine in Linux and hashes are identical. All drives are NTFS.

The reason I use teracopy is you can set the copies away and verify them and go and do something else.

Are the HDDs internal SATA HDDs mounted in caddies for plugging into USB ports? If so then maybe a caddy interface connection issue?
I had this arrangement and was getting random copy failures sometimes at the verification stage. I decided to remove the caddies from the chain and connect external USB-C SSDs direct into the USB-C port. Never had a problem since and the SSDs are much faster.

They are SATA NAS drives plugged into two Wavlink USB docks. I would go SSD as the docks support 2.5 inch SATA drives too but 4tb SSDs are a bit pricey at the moment. So not caddies but similar.

Docks are similar to this -> WL-ST334U USB 3.0 to SATA Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5/3.5 Inch SSD HDD [2 x 8TB Support]

banger said:

Yes same ports in Win 11 and Linux and same hardware. I have 2 USB3 docks and 4 HDDs. Once a week I backup to HDD A and then use teracopy to copy the images to the other 3 HDDs. Randomly it will fail. But works fine in Linux and hashes are identical. All drives are NTFS.

The reason I use teracopy is you can set the copies away and verify them and go and do something else.

Click to expand...

Assuming there is nothing wrong with the drives, I would buy a POWERED USB 3.0 HUB drive. If the USB port cannot provide enough power, the drive either doesn't identify properly or has a lot of write errors. I had a similar situation back in June when one of my backup disks would not let me write more files and I even had issues copying files from there. I then saw that a couple more disks did that and I realized it can't be all three disks failed at the same time! I bought a powered USB 3.0 hub and all the issues are gone. Not even that, but also the extra power allows the disks to work in slightly higher transfer rates that was possible from the USB 3.0 port alone!

PS: You don't need Teracopy to make sure you copy only new files/folders to the disk. Just copy-paste them all and eventually File Explorer will ask you about duplicate files. In that case select the option to manually choose which one to keep for each file. Next you see the option to ignore all files/folders with the same name and same size, so it copies only new or modified files. Just another trick I have learned in this forum. Thanks to all helpers.

The USB docks and hubs are all powered. Teracopy verifies written files by hash Explorer doesn't.

For what it's worth, my Macrium has been used to restore its images many times. It failed me twice. Both times I had copied that image from one drive to another. I learned the hard way to take the time to create a new image if I wanted the same image on more than one drive or a different drive..