This is exactly the same problem I am having! I'm glad I'm not the only one.
I'll implement your workaround but I'd love to know why the server is not responding and fix that issue.
Have you discovered if this causes any memory problems or file lock problems given the connection is automatically dumped?
As an aside, it seems to be that there is a 50Mb file limit cut-off for when this succeeds vs when it fails
(at least on my server)