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
    2015-11-06T05:16:17+00:00

    I took the Win10 upgrade and still have this problem.

    I look through documents for certain data and extract certain pages and it seems every time I find what I'm looking for, or spin the mouse wheel to scroll through more pages, the external USB drive has to spin back up again, and it feels like this is happening every couple minutes.

    This cannot be good for the drive--and neither should the workarounds that seek a file or play a media file every x minutes.

    I downloaded the nosleep program and after unzipping it, clicking on the exe file did nothing. So I right clicked it and tried Compatability mode, and it suggested settings to try and when I did it actually popped up to set the drive, timeout, etc, and put it in the Tray. So I set the drive and chose like 10 minutes and it was as if it was the same problem--already spun down in less than a couple minutes. I tried it at both 10 & 3 minutes.

    If it matters, I also previously set the Windows power settings earlier recommended (NEVER, etc) so for me, on a quad-core i7 laptop on AC power, I didn't get things fixed with Win10, nor with the unsleephd program.

    So back to square one...

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-04T17:10:15+00:00

    What do I have to do in my MS 8.1  to make my external drive uptodate perodical;ly.

    Thanks

    Santosh Mathur

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-09-23T23:06:23+00:00

    As I suggested in a previous reply, if you run a song, or songs, in Windows Media Player in "Repeat" mode, the external HDD's will not turn off (I mute the song in WMP if I do not want to hear the music - other applications can then be audible when it is necessary). Though it is a band aid approach, it works fine and will get you by until someone at MS can figure out a permanent fix. I too, never had the issue in Windows 7, only Windows 8. I understand, though I have not confirmed it, Windows 10 has the same issue. One would think that someone at MS would have figured out a fix by now...hmmmm!!

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-09-23T17:08:18+00:00

    I installed Windows 10 and my external drives shut down just as before.  I am using a hardware encrypted drive, so I have to power down the Surface or unplug the drive in order to re-start the drive. I had been hopeful that Microsoft would fix this bug in Windows 10, but they did not.

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