I recently purchased a 3rd SATA HDD (750GB). All drives in my system are SATA. Very frequently, when transferring data from it to another drive, or vice versa, I always get a "Cannot copy <filename>: It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again." This seems to happen independent of file sizes, or whether copying or cutting. The odd thing is that this happens only to the first file being copied- it gets locked on the source and destination drive (cannot be moved, deleted or overwritten, on either drive). I can, however proceed to copy other files back and forth, although, at random, a file may get locked in transition again. Case in point, when I transfer a folder of 10 mp3 files, the first file will copy over, but the computer will not display a file transfer dialog with a progress bar. When I try to recopy all the files over, it tells me the a file is locked, so I usually select the files that didn't copy over and put them in separately. This only seems to happen when moving data involving the 750GB Samsung Spinpoint F1, although I cannot confirm 100% as I don't really transfer data between the other two drives. I suspect a few things. After initializing the drive (750GB) using windows' disk management, I dumped about 300GB of data from other drives including older ATA drives, though no data seemed corrupt. I also tortured the drive frequently downloading/ uploading using torrents. I will try formatting using JKdefrag to see if that will resolve the issue. Another issue may be that I have disabled my pagefile.sys. I have 2GB of memory, and had read several articles saying it is not so risky to do so. I did not ready anywhere that it may lead to the above problems, though I can't be certain. Finally, I suspect it may be ZoneAlarm's OnAccess scan which somehow "trips" the files as they're copied about, causing the error. Any help is greatly appreciated. Sorry for the long-winded post. Regards

Addendum: Whenever the above error occurs, I am also prevented from shutting down Windows, and getting the following message: "Moving... "Windows is currently working with a file. Either wait for Windows to finish, or close it before you quit Windows." This still happens even if Zone Alarm is shut down.

sometimes memory will tie up a file. Although it isn't designed for this exact issue I have found that a program uphclean will sometimes clear up this type of problem. I run it on all my computers. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/... In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

lurkswithin, thanks for the response. However, this did not seem to resolve the problem. Regards

I would run a chkdsk /f/p from the command prompt or run the gui disk error check and auto fix file system error and fix bad sectors . Second thought would be to renable the paging file and see if the symptoms change or disappear.

It sounds to me like the system (or malware) may be accessing the file at the time you are trying to copy it. Xp does some things when he thinks the PC is idle. One of them is indexing and another is moving files around for faster response. I don't remember where I disabled them, but maybe someone else does. If you are using MS Office, I think it does similar things.

Try getting a tool like 'wholockthis' to see what process is locking the file. It's common to lock files so this in and of itself DOES NOT suggest malware. If it's a rogue process thats locking the file then I'd consider seeking malware removal. 'Unlocker' is another simple little tool to 'unlock' files that are locked by other processes. Cheers, J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m