Single PDF file behaving very badly

Drake Chambers

I've come across a very strange and stubborn PDF file on my PC recently, and the problem is weird enough that the Internets aren't helping.

I have an encrypted external hard drive that I use for backups. This last time I attempted a backup of ~50 gigs, the process ground to a halt when it reached this file, maybe 5 gigs or so into the operation. I've tried a few times and it always stops with this file. When this file pops up, transfer speed gradually trickles down to zero. The operation doesn't stop or give me an error, it just slows to 0 bytes per second and sits there forever.

The PDF itself is unremarkable. It's a capture of a webpage and it's around 700k.

It got weirder when I tried fixing it. Rather, it's weird that there doesn't seem to be anything to fix. I can open and view it, no problem. I can copy it and rename it. If I do so, the new file still refuses to be copied, on its own or as part of a batch. I opened it with Adobe, made an edit and saved a new file, and the new file still refuses to be copied.

All that said, this thing isn't even that important. I can delete it.

But... WTF?

Edit: Oh, I also tried copying it to a different thumb drive, just in case my backup drive is the problem. Nope, same issue. So I can copy it all over the C: drive but cannot copy it to another drive.

zepherin

Probably a checksum issue. Try print to pdf.

BlindZenDriver

Anything special with the name of the file, like say letters that are not just a-z or maybe some unusual non letter or numbers characters in the name. It should not matter, but I have seen weird issues caused by file names alone.
You may try and simply rename the file to something ordinary and see if it makes a difference.

Drake Chambers

So, update.

I've found that multiple files are affected, all in a folder that I had moved from my last PC during the upgrade to this one.

I've messed around with the file names and none of that seems to make a difference.

@zepherin might be on to something. When I try to print to PDF, it gets about 80% through a completion bar before freezing and eventually crashing. Any other ideas?

I'm not sure this is going to be worth fixing. I've got thousands of files in this folder, who knows how many broken. If there's no mass fix or workaround for it I might just call it a loss.

zepherin

Drake Chambers wrote: »

So, update.

I've found that multiple files are affected, all in a folder that I had moved from my last PC during the upgrade to this one.

I've messed around with the file names and none of that seems to make a difference.

@zepherin might be on to something. When I try to print to PDF, it gets about 80% through a completion bar before freezing and eventually crashing. Any other ideas?

I'm not sure this is going to be worth fixing. I've got thousands of files in this folder, who knows how many broken. If there's no mass fix or workaround for it I might just call it a loss.

Print to pdf the first 75% then 1% at a go afterwards until you find the corrupt files.

I mean you can try to restore the drive and use partition magic and pray. You could always just skip this file transfer the rest and work on this one later.

Orogogus

I think if you go to a command prompt and run chkdsk/r it should map out the bad sectors for you, and any bad files will be "repaired." That is, they'll probably be trashed, but you'll at least be able to copy them and whatnot.

Drake Chambers

This is on a work PC where I don't have permissions to run chkdsk. I've been trying to avoid calling this in because it's weird and I know the first tier support I go through will take forever before it gets escalated.

I've done a little more experimenting and have found that I can move the files to networked drives no problem - the hitching point seems to be when trying to copy to an external drive. I don't get it.

Orogogus

You're not really copying data if you're moving the file around on the same drive -- it just updates the file index with the new directory information. But if you move it to a new partition or copy it then it actually has to try to read the bad data.

Zilla360

The PDF file has become sentient, and refuses to budge. You'll have to dive into the computer, TRON style, and do battle. :P

ArbitraryDescriptor

Can you just save them out as EPS/ PNGs? Is it important that they remain PDFs?

Was the folder from the old system ever under disk encryption? I wonder if there's some artifact of it embedded in the files.

Edit: Oh; check the permissions, does your user account have full control? Are you the owner? (Try to take ownership if not)

Drake Chambers

Orogogus wrote: »

You're not really copying data if you're moving the file around on the same drive -- it just updates the file index with the new directory information. But if you move it to a new partition or copy it then it actually has to try to read the bad data.

Thanks, I do understand that. That's why I was surprised that I didn't see the problem moving the files over the network to offsite servers. The only thing I can't do, seemingly, is move / copy them to external media.

ArbitraryDescriptor wrote: »

Can you just save them out as EPS/ PNGs? Is it important that they remain PDFs?

Was the folder from the old system ever under disk encryption? I wonder if there's some artifact of it embedded in the files.

Edit: Oh; check the permissions, does your user account have full control? Are you the owner? (Try to take ownership if not)

I'm trying to avoid having to go in and individually modify or re-save the files, as it's literally thousands of files. This is an archive of four years of work product.

The previous PC and the one I'm using now both use full disk encryption.

As far as permissions go, I am the owner.

Shadowfire

Backups?

Because that's kinda the stage these files may be at now.