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
    2014-02-09T18:40:44+00:00

    A similar problem here with WD 2.5" "My passport" USB 3.0 disk on Win8.1.  The problem is that the drive is in encrypted mode (via a helper USB CD device from which unlocker program runs). When the device is powered off, the unlocked state is lost, so further attempt to access the main disk drive fails.

    Such devices definitely must be addressed by the fix.

    -- pa

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-02-08T21:47:13+00:00

    Solved forgot to add key in regedit but also missed (Thanks to Seagate Support) usb root hub (xHCI) was still checked. Thanks Microsoft.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-02-08T14:51:43+00:00

    heres a fix that involves replacing the usbhub.sys & usbport.sys 

    Download the following file:

    https://mega.co.nz/#!6RdhDSgY!rB7TwMm8OMO7vsmC8zalNNi5CqdW5NlsSoyz7WLoxzQ

    Extract the zip file

    Run the appropriate usb-dirtyfix.bat (X86 or X64 depending on your os) as administrator

    Once the backups are done (*.bak) copy over the over the provided replacement usbhub.sys & usbport.sys to the folder (c:\windows\system32\drivers)

    Finally reboot your pc & the usb system should act like it did in win 7

    This should work on win 8 & 8.1

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