JPEG Image hangs disk and freezes Windows

[Stantondow]

Hi,

I have an external USB disk that is used to store photos, mostly RAW, some edited JPEG files. I backup the photos to another USB disk using Synctoy.

Recently as soon as a certain JPEG is accessed Synctoy freezes and the disk hangs. Unplugging the device is the only way to unfreeze the system.

Same when the file is clicked in explorer, the thumbnail displays ok, but click or right click and explorer freezes. Disk needs to be unplugged.

Checked the context menu and displayed as list instead of thumbnail but no difference ... And neither of those should affect copying files anyway.

The same behaviour is also present on two different Windows 7 systems.

Has anyone else come across this and found a way to remedy it?

[jaylach]

Being a photographer myself, and also dealing with RAW and JPEG formats, it would be my belief that the image file in question is corrupt. If you still have the RAW image I would suggest trying to delete the problem JPEG and then remake from the RAW.

[nikhil0082]

I suppose the issue is there in the JPEG file, or there are bad sectors In the Disk, where the JPEG is stored.
Although it's not convenient to do so, I would recommend you to perform a Full Format for your Drive from the Disk Manager or Explorer and then see if the problem persists.

To confirm if it is a bad sector issue, you can even try to edit the RAW and then save it as a JPEG on some other drive(a pen drive or a external HDD), which will tell us if the problem is in your System, in your JPEG file or your Drive.

[jaylach]

If you choose to format the drive PLEASE make sure that all files are backed up! Of course this cannot be done with the JPEG in question but can manually be done with all others.

[nikhil0082]

True. Make sure that you back up everything. I forgot to mention that. My bad. But before formatting, please try processing the RAW and then saving the JPEG on some other drive. This will help us understand whether the problem is in the drive or the file.