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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.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
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.
Same problem here; External HD's worked fine on windows 8 but now spontaneously go to sleep under windows 8.1 after just 5-10 min. Tried all the fixes mentioned - no effect. Very annoying. Problem occurs with both western digital mypassport external HD's and buffalo ministation plus HD's.
Here is a simple work around that is working for me: I downloaded a video file from youtube and put it on the external HD. Then I open a video player, in my case VLC, and set it to play the video in an infinite loop with the sound off. Then I minimize the video player , or move the video player way off to the side and down, where it is just barely visible from the Desktop. Viola! The HD stays alive!
Ridiculous for sure, but it works for me. Sure hope there is a permanent fix for this problem soon.
Tried that but it did not work I hope you can release some info on what exactly Microsoft did to the USB drives. You said that Windows 8.1 system suspends idle USB devices more aggressively but it just causing more problems. If there's an option to manually disable that it'll be great.
Same problem here:
After the installation of Windows 8.1 RTM on my Surface Pro the following error occurs when using my Kingston DTHX30/256GB DataTraveler HyperX30 USB 3.0 Drive.
After about 30 seconds not accessing the usb drive it seems to go to the suspend state. But then it will not wake up right. The windows explorer stuck until I remove the usb drive from the usb port or wait a minute.
I can delay this error if I set the Hard drive turn off time in the energy settings to "never" (was at 15 minutes before) and turn off usb selective suspend. But then the same error occurs after some minutes.
Please note that Windows 8.1 system suspends idle USB devices more aggressively than it used to do on Windows 8. As a result, you could run into device issues or a combination of device/hub/controller issues.
As this is causing problems, can MS please either undo this or at a minimum provide a setting that ACTUALLY controls what it says it controls? Meaning all these suggestions to settings that would plainly appear to keep the device from sleeping have NO EFFECT whatsoever. On ANYTHING but a laptop or tablet, why would ANYONE want this setting or behavior?
It's like using the Shift key and all you get are lower case letters because the key was reprogrammed to be less aggressive with making upper case letters.
