Windows 8.1 causes external hard drives to auto-sleep?

Anonymous
2013-10-27T07:38:58+00:00

My 2 external hard drives are always active as I have disabled auto sleep. I didn't have this problem way since Windows 7, but after upgrading to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8, my 2 external hard drives will automatically went to sleep around 10 minutes of inactivity. I have tried the power options, device manager options, but to no avail. Any help? Thanks. 

I'm using NoSleepHD as a temporary fix but I hope there's a permanent fix for this.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2013-11-01T15:32:42+00:00

Thanks for the trace. We will analyze and get back to you. We published a blog on this yesterday to bring awareness and get help from the community to root-cause the issue. We think this is all due to suspending the device when idle which we never used to do in previous OSes. We will find out if this turns out to be something else.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usbcoreblog/archive/2013/11/01/help-after-installing-windows-8-1-my-usb-drive-disappears-or-file-transfers-stop-unexpectedly-r-a-post-title.aspx

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-06-14T15:13:03+00:00

    Yes I have the same problem.

    I have a Hp Compaq nc6400 notebook with two external hard drives.

    1 is a fujitsu handydrive 300 usb and the other is a ST310005 20AS lacie terabite usb hard drive

    I also have installed keepaliveHD.

    Ive tried all of the power options to prevent Usb from sleeping but dosn't work.

    This as only happened in windows 8.1. I used to have windows 7 and worked perfectly.

    Anybody got any solutions?

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-06-03T08:59:16+00:00

    Hi,

    Thank you for sharing the information. Let us know in case you need any help on Windows.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-05-30T22:32:02+00:00

    Hi Berton,

    What is the issue status?

    Hmm, 

    Sorry for not getting back to this thread. I fixed the problem and completely forgot about this post.

    Here's what I did to get my USB drives to stop going to sleep, making me have to Eject them and plug them in again:

    Go to the Control Panel (Right Click on the Windows Icon (where the start menu used to be) and select Control Panel) In the upper right-hand corner, search for Device Manager. Click Device Manager and it should open the Device Manager window.

    Scroll down to Universal Serial Bus controllers and expand the menu,

    I am not sure which one of the USB devices under the Universal Serial Bus controllers menu was causing the problem, so I went though all of them and did this:

    Right Click on the item (such as USB Root Hub or Intel(R) 8 Series/C220 Series USB EHCI #1 - 8C26) in the menu and select Properties. Click the Power Management tab and uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

    On a desktop computer, I don't see a reason why any USB devices should be put to sleep to save power. This seems like a Windows 8 thing to help save power on tablets and laptops.

    Anyway, after I unchecked Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power on all the devices, the problem went away.

    I hope this helps someone.

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