USB3 Drive Base Disconnecting During Write Cycle

Anonymous
2015-11-29T04:40:25+00:00

OK, this is an interesting problem.

So, I have an external SSD in a USB3 enclosure, and I've been moving my Steam Library onto it.

The SSD is a Samsung EVO 850, 500GB drive. I've tried two different enclosures, a Startech and an Orico. Both behave the same way.

The enclosure is hooked up through the keyboard base of the Surface Book via one of the USB3 ports.

The problem I'm encountering is when the drive is busy writing files the base seems to disconnect and the drive disappears. It eventually remounts, but of course the damage is done... 

To test this issue, I ran Crystal Disk Mark 5 on the external drive, and the read cycle is fine. Once the write cycle begins, it seems to hang up and then suddenly the drive disconnects.

Anyone have any idea what might be going on here?

Surface | Surface Book | Display and screen

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-12-19T19:30:28+00:00

    No go for me unfortunately.  I tried it a while back.

    Just tried it again hoping that a few updates and "firmware" updates would've changed things but still happening on my setup.  I think I mentioned it before but I ended up putting my drives behind a USB 2.0 hub for those particular drives to work.

    Edit:  You can also use a USB 2.0 extention cord to go from USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 if you prefer not to use a USB 2.0 Hub.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-12-18T06:22:25+00:00

    I found a solution!!!!!!!!!!!

    • go to "This PC" (previously known as "My Computer")
    • right-click the SSD drive & go to properties
    • Go to the Hardware tab, select the correct SCSI disk drive & click the properties button
    • click the "Change Settings" button
    • go to the Policies tab
    • Change the removal policy from "Quick Removal" to "Better Performance"
    • side-note, I unchecked "Enable write caching on the device", don't know if this helps or not.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-11-22T20:26:35+00:00

    Thank you for your reply, I placed an order yesterday for the FIDECO USB3.0 Dual Bay HDD Docking Station with Offline Clone Function and I hope that it does not use either the JMicron or JMS567 chips. If that is the case I may have to return it and get the FD2002.

    Besides this issue, are you completely happy with the SB?

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-11-22T19:58:21+00:00

    Yes I did, now I have an Innatek FD2002 and have had no problem and top notch performance.

    After a while I found that ASM1153 USB<->sata chipset did work whereas JMicron chipsets is generally the cause.

    On second hand, I guess JMicron chipsets do happen to work pretty well with other PCs, so maybe both Microsoft and JMicron are guilty here...

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-11-22T19:45:59+00:00

    I have the exact same issue with the Unitek (dual bay) enclosure using the SB with performance base. It has worked flawlessly with Surface Pro 2 & 4, Surface Studio and IMac. On the SB is able to read flawlessly the entire drive but it is unable to write to the drive.

    Did you find a different enclosure that works with the SB?

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