USB3 Drive Base Disconnecting During Write Cycle

Anonymous

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?

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72 answers

Anonymous

2015-12-01T20:33:16+00:00

It sounds like your issues are identical to mine.

I might swap mine out for another and also try out that cable. I hate the idea of having to get a new machine as much as I hate the idea of losing a USB port, but I need more reliability than this.
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Anonymous

2015-12-01T20:22:51+00:00

Well, I spoke too soon about the second port not being a problem. It dropped hard just a few minutes ago.

I have my system hooked up to a Startech docking station, so I run 2 additional monitors, and it has a USB3 powered hub and ethernet on it. I was installing Battlenet onto the drive, and boom. It dropped. I lost my keyboard, ethernet, but surprisingly, my monitors were still on... I had to undock and redock the screen to get things back.

It's consistent now too, if I attempt to install Battlenet, it drops at 89% each time.

I then pulled out my hard drive dock, and plugged my drive in, installed Battlenet, and it worked...

I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to try and explain this too... I'm really starting to lean toward the return and wait till Surface Book 2... I really like what this machine can do, but these bugs and the constant fighting I have to do to get the machine to do what I want is really starting to wear on me.
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Anonymous

2015-12-01T18:26:56+00:00

I haven't tried taking my Surface Book to the store for a replacement (trying to explain this to someone in the store sounds troublesome), but it always seems to me like the power to the entire keyboard gets interrupted randomly, because when this happens the keyboard disconnects briefly.

I can't see too many people talking about this, so that gives me hope that getting a replacement device would solve the issue, but maybe what we're trying to do isn't so common? Just dumping files on my external drive never seems to cause a problem.
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Anonymous

2015-12-01T18:16:18+00:00

I see someone else with the issue too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3soyxx/surface_book_and_external_hard_drive/

It seems he solved the problem with a Y cable, do you have one you can try?

I don't have a Y cable, but I did try using an external powered drive dock (http://amzn.to/1TrQXlT), and it worked fine. It seems like some kind of power interrupt when the drive gets busy. So does that mean I have a defective port on the Surface Book, or is this some kind of design flaw?
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Anonymous

2015-12-01T17:48:54+00:00

I see someone else with the issue too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3soyxx/surface_book_and_external_hard_drive/

It seems he solved the problem with a Y cable, do you have one you can try?
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