USB3 Drive Base Disconnecting During Write Cycle

Also adding myself to this list.

Surface Book Lot #1547

Core i7/ 512GB SSD / 16GB RAM

I've had the Surface Book since December 17th now and during that time, I've  bought a second Western Digital 2TB USB 3.0 Passport drive.  Definitely something up with the USB port's power or driver as connecting these two onto my home PC and transferring the files doesn't happen.

I ended up having to transfer all my files in small chunks instead of moving my entire files from my old passport to the new passport.  This is extremely annoying from the perspective of someone who is a photographer and is wanting to use surface book as a mobile hub for photo/video editing.  

Reading though this thread it sounds like even the $200 Microsoft Dock or anything powered attached to it won't help.

--The TL;DR version--

With every new Laptop/PC I buy or build, I always do an initial full Acronis image of the drive. The image ended up being extremely large (400GB+). I did this to completion twice and a 3rd time half way trying to figure out why they're so large in comparison to all my other images before realizing that bitlocker was on by default.  This was with just the older Passport drive connected so I can at least say that just having one drive connected, everything appears to be fine.

The next thing I did was to start moving important videos and phtos from my older Passport to the new one I just bought and then just use the old Passport as a drive to hold Steam games.  I use a software called Beyond Compare 4 to backup/sync large amount of files from one drive to another so in this case it's just copying all the files over to the new drive. After some time, not sure how long but that is when I started seeing the Event ID 11, 50, 51, and 140 errors show up on the Event Viewer.

11 - ERROR: driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk#\DR#

50 - Warning: {Write Delayed Failed:} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file.

51 - Warning: An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk#\DR#

140 - Warning: The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur in volumeID: #:

As noted in the beginning, if I move files in small chunks, maybe 15GB max(?) things appear to be manageable.

I am having the same problem:

WD My Passport Ultra 3TB, USB 3 interface (2 drives were tested, both brand new)

• read operation seems to be OK (didn't do a thorough test, didn't stall)
• write operation stalled after 5-10 seconds, always

My Passport (older generation 2TB, USB 3 interface)

• read OK (intermittent lock up while playing games from this drive)
• write OK (seems to be OK)

All three drives work fine with my older Surface Pro 1

Tentative conclusion:

This is definitely a Surface Book USB Port issue. Hopefully, it's fixable with a driver update. 

P.S. I am on lot#1544 (i7 256 8GB), not on insider build.

To continue my saga here I went home to try something out.

I took an old 500gb Seagate 7200rpm 2.5" laptop HD that used to belong in my old Macbook Pro, and stuck it into my StarTech enclosure. I ran Crystal Disk Mark and it tested out fine. No drops.

I also tested out my Western Digital MyPassport 2TB HD, and that also worked fine.

So, for my Surface Book with the latest updates (including the latest hardware update) installed and a later Lot # of 1547, my problem is now isolated to 2.5" SSD's in an external enclosure.

I'm also using a T1 and I am having the issue. I've also tried powering the T1 externally with a splitter cable so and sadly that didn't appear to help in the slightest

For me, the exact same thing happened with SSD or 2TB My Passport, directly on port or connected to a Targus dock (powered). So, I don't think it has anything to do with power.

As I have mentioned before, it also can corrupt some of the files it does transfer before it disconnects. This is a serious issue.