Darin,
As stated in the previous post, I used the EXACT SAME CARD READER and the EXACT same card with the EXACT same contents on that card for ALL transfers.
That's good. Change as few variables as possible and that will help pinpoint the problem.
If it was the card reader or anti-virus software, then wouldn't I see errors using all software, not JUST PM?
I didn't suggest that anti-virus software was a problem, though there have been some anti-virus programs that erroneously claimed that parts of PM were a trojan-horse.
In this case, I can copy the files using three other applications without any copy errors. That's 0% copying errors when copying thousands of files. But with PM I get about 1% copy errors or more. (I am not 100% sure whether one specific card is problematic or all cards exhibit the same problems. I have to do more testing in that respect. But again, ALL my cards copy fine using other software.)
The strange thing is that the PM "backup copy" on a different hard drive has the SAME errors. If I find a bad file on the main destination, the SAME file will be bad on the backup copy made by PM.
So, I can say with near certainty that this problem is specific to PM and not any hardware or other software problems.
The issue could still be quite probably bad memory somewhere in your system's address space. Other programs need not be affected if the memory buffer they use to transfer the data is not bad. All it takes is a few bytes of bad memory in a specific location in memory to cause the issue that you're describing and not all programs would be affected.
If I do a second ingest with the same cards and card reader, I will get different files which are bad, so the errors do seem somewhat random.
That also indicates that RAM could be bad. PM does not reuse its memory buffers for copying, it allocates memory, copies data to/from it, and then frees that memory when the file copy is complete.
I am not sure what the other programs are using for verification. I know Tera Copy lists source and target CRC values in their log after the copy. I will concede that any true verify would double the download time, so you definitely can't get "something for nothing" in terms of the verify.
In any case, there is definitely something going on with PM ingest as opposed to the other software.
I suggest that you get a utility program and do an exhaustive test of your RAM.
I will see if I still have some "bad" files on my hard drive. In general I have been deleting the bad copies since they are dangerous to have on my drive.
No need. If this problem happens as often as you have suggested, then a few new Ingests will cause the problem to occur again and then you'll have some samples to send me.
Please note that problems such as yours are extremely rare. In each case that I have been involved in solving, the problem has either been bad RAM, a driver issue, a flaky card reader, or a card that is going bad. Photo Mechanic itself has never been the root cause of the problem.
-Kirk
