I'm running Windows 8.1 Pro (64 bit) on a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H (rev 1.0) motherboard with a Samsung 830 SSD and 8GB of RAM. All is normally well in general day to day use.
However, when I plug in a USB3 hard drive (Both a Samsung USB3 hard drive and a Hard drive dock with Sata hard drive plugged into it) to the back ports and initiate a transfer from my server over the network to the hard drive, after a minute or so into the copy process, the speed indicator graph plunges to the bottom (zero) and the system freezes and becomes unresponsive within about 5 seconds. i.e. the mouse will move and still click for a couple of seconds but then the whole system freezes.
Transfers over the network to an attached USB3 hard drive are always and consistently reproducing the same system freezing. I've also had the system freeze when writing to the USB3 hard drive when recovering an Acronis backup which was not over the network but was stored on an internal hard drive - so I think this is a system/usb issue not necessarily a network one but I'm not sure. Writing to USB2 sticks doesn't seem to cause the same problem.
So far I've tried:
Transferring large multi gigabyte files and folders of many smaller files (pictures)
Using different USB ports
Updating chipset drivers
Updating the VIA USB3 drivers
Updating the network adapter drivers
Updating all the other drivers I can find from the Gigabyte website
Disabling the network adapter I was using (I have two in the system) and enabling the other.
Removing "hidden" USB devices from Device Manager.
Updating the BIOS to the latest 18f Beta BIOS
Resetting the BIOS CMOS and using defaults by removing the battery and also using the jumper switch
Disabling HS Port Switching in the BIOS for all "ports"
Disabling XHCI and EHCI Handoff (and re-enabling it etc)
Installing a fresh Windows 8.1 installation to a separate VHDX file and clean booting into that (problem persists with completely fresh installation)
Removing one of my two sticks of RAM and testing then replacing with the other and testing again.
Running Memtest on RAM
Checking the Event Viewer for indications of cause of crash (the system freezes seemingly without being able to write any report - no blue screen, no message, just a freeze)
I'm at a bit of a loss now as to what's causing these system crashes so consistently. I'm just troubleshooting with a lot of guesswork here and although there are lots of reports I've found about Windows 8/8.1 problems and USB3, I can't find anywhere a solution that explains why this might be happening or a potential solution.
I haven't yet tried installing Win7 and trying that but other than that I'm pretty much out of options. In any case I don't want to go back to Win7. Is there anywhere else I can check that might have recorded or point to the problem when the system freezes - somewhere other than Event Viewer? Any other known issues/solutions?
Any help or ideas would be very much appreciated. Unless I'm mistaken I think it's well out of RMA time but maybe not?
