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
    2013-10-30T19:04:44+00:00

    I have this issue and have tried all suggestions. My Drive is a LaCie 1Tb USB. The drive worked fine in 8.0. This has to be a driver issue in 8.1. Every time I save a file, the dialog box needs to wait for the USB drive to wake up and reconnect to the USB (with sound effects) even if I'm not saving to the external drive. 

    I have also posted on other threads with no luck finding a solution.

    Please can someone from MS look into this issue.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-10-30T04:54:11+00:00

    Same problem.

    Using an external 1TB A-DATA HD710 USB 3.0 HDD.

    This DID NOT happen on Windows 8. Already tried all the mentiones solutions above without difference. Users are reporting the same issue on other forums.

    As a temporary solution I'm also using that "NoSleepHD" program, but hopefully MS fixes this soon!

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-10-29T21:50:36+00:00

    Hi, the same happens to me.

    I have 2 SeaGate Expansion 2TB hard drive, seems that only one goes to sleep; it never happened with windows 8.

    Of course I setted everything not to sleep, not to suspend, ecc.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-10-29T20:48:28+00:00

    Same problem with western digital drives. They are configured with the WD tool to never going to sleep mode but since upgrading to Windows 8.1 my drives go to sleep about 5mn after inactivity.

    How this can be fix ?

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