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
    2015-12-04T15:55:41+00:00

    One more thing I just thought about.

    My system is an i7 with 16GB memory, 512GB of storage and the dGPU. Since yours is a day one, I suspect it may not be the same spec.

    DowerChin,

    If you decide to replace yours, I would be interested to see your results.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-10T05:38:39+00:00

    I bought surface book couple weeks ago. It's Win10 Pro system and i7 with 16GB ram and Nvidia GPU, somehow I can copy from my WD USB3.0 External Hard Drive to my surface book but when I want copy files from my surface book to my External Hard Drive, it doesn't work. I tried many times and the progress bar stopped at 2% or 3% everytime and then it showed Error 0x80080079. How to solve this? My surface hard drive is 512GB and the External hard drive is 3TB.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-22T22:13:40+00:00

    It took me a while to get a new Surface Book after returning the original one.

    The new one is a new LOT #, 1547, and sadly, the same issue with my StarTech SSD enclosure.

    I did pick up a Samsung T1 500GB External SSD, and that works fine... So, my only conclusions is there must be something not quite right in the USB ports. I tried 2 different brands of external USB3 enclosures and 2 different SSD's. Both dismount during heavy write cycles. These same enclosures and drives work fine on my desktop, Surface Pro 3, Macbook Pro, and Asus Gaming laptop. It's just the Surface Book, can't seem to handle an enclosure that uses a normal laptop SSD. 

    So, here's a summary of my issue if anyone at MS wants to look into this:

    1. External USB3 Enclosure with either a Samsung EVO 850 500gb SSD or Crucial M4 500GB SSD will unmount during heavy write cycles.
    2. I've tried having only the enclosure attached.
    3. I'm testing running Crystal Disk Manager to test the read/write speeds of the drives in the enclosures.
    4. I tried 2 StarTech enclosures and an Orico enclosure. All 3 dropped during the first write cycle, Read is always ok.
    5. I tried a Samsung T1 500gb External SSD, and had NO issues.
    6. All 3 enclosures worked fine on my Surface Pro 3, Mid 2014 Retina Macbook Pro, Asus ROG Gaming laptop, and a custom built desktop with an Asus motherboard.
    7. The drives worked fine when I used my Inateck external drive Dock, which has it's own power source.

    Lastly, I installed every update Windows Update found today.

    Everything seems to point to the inability of the Surface Book to handle the power draw of a laptop SSD in an enclosure.

    If anyone else has any suggestions, I'm open to them...

    Dower

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-12-22T22:58:13+00:00

    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.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-12-22T23:03:13+00:00

    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

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