Is there a way to turn off using ram as intermediary when transfering files between 2 internal hdds? (write cache is off on all drives)

Question

right forum?  first time here. none of the options seem perfect. so i guess this applies to 'setup.' i tried to describe what's happening verbosely from the start of a file transfer to completion of writing file to 2nd hard drive.
win 7 64bit home - i2600k 3.4ghz - 8gb of ram - 2hdd 1 ssd
I have this problem when transferring files between 2 internal hard drives. one is unhealthy (slow write speeds but not looking for advice to replace it because it serves its unimportant purpose). so, the unhealthy drive drops into PIO mode - that's acceptable.
however, a little over 1gb of any file transfer is cached in RAM during the file transfer. after the file transfer window closes, indicating the transfer is "complete" (HA!), it still has 1gb to write from RAM which takes about 30minutes. This would
not be a problem if it did not also earmark an additional 5gb of ram (never in use), leaving 1gb or less 'free' for programs. this needlessly causes my pc to be sluggish - moreso than a typical file transfer file between 2 healthy drives. i have windows write
caching turned off on all drives. so this is a different setting i can't figure out nor find after 2 hours of google searches.
info from taskmanager and resource monitor.
idle estimates: total 8175, cached 532, available 7218, free 6771 and the graph in taskman shows about 1gb memory in use.
at the start of a file transfer:  8175,  2661,  6070,  4511free and ~2gb of ram used in graph. No problems, yet.
however, as the transfer goes on, the free ram value drops to less than 1gb (1gb normal +1gb temporary transfer cache +5gb of unused earmarked space = ~7gb),  cached value increases, but the amount of used ram remains relatively unchanged (2gb
during transfer and slowly drops to idle values as remaining bits are written to the 2nd hard drive).  the free value is even slower to return to idle norms after the transfer completes writing data to 2nd hard drive from RAM. so, it's earmarking an addition
5gb of ram that are completely unused during this process.  *****This is my problem*****
Is there any way to turn this function off or limit its maximum size. in addition to sluggishness, it poses risk to data integrity from system errors/power loss, and it's difficult to discern the actual time of transfer completion, which makes it difficult
to know when it's safe to shutdown my pc (any data left in ram is lost, and the file transfer is ruined - as of now i have to use resmon and look through what's writing to disk2 -> sometimes easy to forget about it when the transfer window closed 20-30minutes
ago and the file is still in the process of writing to the 2nd disk).
Any solution would be nice, and a little extra info like whether it can be applied to only 1 hard drive would be excellent.

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply.
(Although i have an undergrad degeee in computers, it's been 15years and my vocab is terrible. so, i will try my best. keep an open mind. it's not my occupation, so i rarely have to communicate ideas regarding PCs)
It operates the same way regardless of the write-cache option being enabled. It's not using the 5gb for read/write buffer - it's merely bloating standby memory during the transfer process at a rate similar to the write speed of destination (for my situation).
at this point i don't expect a solution. i've tried to look through lists of known memory leaks but i dont have the vocabulary to be 100% certain this problem is not documented. as of now it can't affect many people - NAS's with low bandwidth networks, usb
attached storage etc. do bugs get forwarded from these forums? below i can outline the consistent and repeatable nature not only on my pc but on others' pcs as well (2012 forum post i found).
I've been testing and paying a little more attention and i can describe it better:
Just the Facts
Resmon Memory Info: "In Use" stays consistent ~1gb (idle amount and roughly the same when nothing else is running during file transfer)
                                 "Modified" contains file transfer
data (meta data?) which remains consistent at little over 1gb (minor fluctuations due to working as a buffer). After the file transfer window closes "Modified" slowly diminishes as it finishes lazy writing (i believe that's the term). I forget idle
pc amount, but after transfer this is ony 58mb)
"Standby" as the transfer starts it immediately rises to ~2gb. I'm sure this initial jump is normal. However, it will bloat well over 5gb over time with a large enough transfer increasing at a consistent rate during the entire transfer
process. the crux of the matter.
"Free" will drop as far as 35-50megabytes over time.
as the transfer starts, the "Standby" increases by an immediate chunk then at a slow rate throughout entire transfer process(~1mb/s). once writing metadata to RAM no longer occurs, the "Modified" ram slowly (@500kb/s matching resmon disk
activity for that file write) diminishes as it finishes lazy writing, After file is 100% written to destination drive, "Standby" remains a bloated figure long after.
a 1.4gb transfer filled 3677MB of "Standby" by the time writing finished and modified ram cleared. after 20minutes, it's still bloated at 3696MB. after 30-40mins it's down to 2300mb - this is about what it jumps immediately to when transfer starts
- it now remains at this level until i reboot.
I notice the "standby" is available to programs. but they do not operate well. e.g. a 480p trailer on IMDB.com will stop-and-go every 2-3seconds (stream buffers fine/fast) - this would be during the worst case scenario of 35-50mb "Free"
ram. my pc isn't and never was the latest and greatest, but choppy video never happens even with 1 or 2 resource hogs running (video processing/encoding, games, etc).
Conjecture Below
i think it's a problem when one device is significantly slower at writing than the source device - this is the factor that i share with others having this problem. when data is written to modified ram then sent to destination, standby memory is expanded
until it completely or nearly fills all available RAM - If the transfer size is large enough relative to how slow the write speed of destination device is. otherwise it fills it up as much as the file size/write speed issue allows. the term "memory leak"
is used below but may not technically be one, but it's an apt description in layman's terms.
i saw a similar post in these forums (link at end). My problem is repeatable and consistent with others' reports. I wasn't sure if i should revive it with a reply. some of these online message boards (maybe not this one) are extremely picky
and sensitive, lol.the world will end if an old thread revives - even if for a good reason.
i can answer some of the ancillary issues. one person (Friday, September 21, 2012 8:33 PM) mentions not being able to shutdown, i asume he means stuck on the shutdown screen - this is because lazy writing has not completed - his nas write speed is significantly
slower than reading from source - the last bits of data left in ram still needs to be writen to the destination. shutdown will stall for as long as needed until the data finishes writing to destination to prevent data loss.
another person (Monday, September 24, 2012 6:31 PM) mentions the rate of the leak, but the rate is more likely a function of read speed from source relative to write speed of destination. which explains why my standby expands closer to a 1:1 ratio compared
to his 1:100 (he said 10mb per 1000mb)
we all have the same exact results/behaviour, but slightly different rates of bloating/leaking. as the file is written from from the ram to the destination, standby increases during this time - not a problem if read and write speeds are roughly equal (unless
your transfering a terabytes then i bet the problem could rear its head). when writing lags, it gives the opportunity for standby ram to bloat with no maximum except the amount of installed ram. slower the write speed, the worse the problem.
The reply on Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:04 AM has before and after pictures of exactly what i described in
"Just the Facts". Specifically the resmon image showing the Memory Tab.
The kb2647452 hotfix seems to do some weird things relative to this problem. in the posts that mention they've applied it: after file completes it looks like the "standby" bloat is now "in use" bloat. as per info from Tuesday, October
09, 2012 10:36 PM - bobmtl in an earlier post applies the patch. compare images from earlier posts to his post on this date. seems like a worse problem. Also, his process list indicates it's very unlikely they add up to ~4gb as listed in the color coded bar.
wheres the extra gb's coming from? likely the same culprit of what filled up "standby" memory for me and others. it looks like this patch relative to this problem merely recategorizes the bloat - just changes the title it falls under.
Link:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/955b600f-976d-4c09-86dc-2ff19e726baf/memory-leak-in-windows-7-64bit-when-writing-to-a-network-shared-disk?forum=w7itpronetworking