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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.
There is a plan to fix. One part of the fix, hopefully, will be rolled out in a couple of weeks (2nd week of Jan is what I was told) through Windows update. In this fix, we have whitelisted (i.e disable power management) good numbers of devices that are listed in the table on the blog page. However, looking at the feedback we received, we realized that whitelisting this way isn't going to scale because the list seems to be growing by the day, so we have built a heuristic to enable power management selectively for scenarios where conserving battery is critical. This heuristics (required code change) is under test and I'm hoping we will be able to roll out either in Feb or March update. I think the initial fix that's going to come out in Jan will cover majority of the high volume devices.
We believe that reverting it back completely to the Win8 behavior is not in the good interest of the ecosystem. If we don't tighten this now, industry will continue to make sloppy devices and we will all pay for poor user experience for lot longer - not just on Windows platform but on other platforms also.
So just few more weeks and hopefully most of you will not have to apply this registry hack. Thanks for all your cooperation in providing the needed feedback on the blog site so we could understand the severity of the issue and take immediate action.
-Eliyas
Eliyas, I do see my Seagate GoFlex USB 2.0 drive on the List of Seagate Impacted Drives as of Dec 11. It is the third one down on Seagate ending in 5071. However, I do not see my Seagate Backup Plus 3.0 on the list. I am unable to find a USB/VID number for it but do find under device manager under the catagorie of disk drives the following:
Even though I see it under disk drives I do not see it under the usb section. I want to make sure this Seagate backup is on the list. Can you tell me if it is on the list for the fix coming out in several weeks. If not what can I do to make sure it is included.
There is a plan to fix. One part of the fix, hopefully, will be rolled out in a couple of weeks (2nd week of Jan is what I was told) through Windows update. In this fix, we have whitelisted (i.e disable power management) good numbers of devices that are listed in the table on the blog page. However, looking at the feedback we received, we realized that whitelisting this way isn't going to scale because the list seems to be growing by the day, so we have built a heuristic to enable power management selectively for scenarios where conserving battery is critical. This heuristics (required code change) is under test and I'm hoping we will be able to roll out either in Feb or March update. I think the initial fix that's going to come out in Jan will cover majority of the high volume devices.
We believe that reverting it back completely to the Win8 behavior is not in the good interest of the ecosystem. If we don't tighten this now, industry will continue to make sloppy devices and we will all pay for poor user experience for lot longer - not just on Windows platform but on other platforms also.
So just few more weeks and hopefully most of you will not have to apply this registry hack. Thanks for all your cooperation in providing the needed feedback on the blog site so we could understand the severity of the issue and take immediate action.
-Eliyas
Eliyas, I do see my Seagate GoFlex USB 2.0 drive on the List of Seagate Impacted Drives as of Dec 11. It is the third one down on Seagate ending in 5071. However, I do not see my Seagate Backup Plus 3.0 on the list. I am unable to find a USB/VID number for it but do find under device manager under the catagorie of disk drives the following:
Even though I see it under disk drives I do not see it under the usb section. I want to make sure this Seagate backup is on the list. Can you tell me if it is on the list for the fix coming out in several weeks. If not what can I do to make sure it is included.
Eliyas, I went to the scsi section of my hardware system info and found the following which is very close to you the first item on your List of Seagate Impacted Drives. The one listed has the same serial number as my Backup Plus. The total readout is USB\VID_0BC2&PIDA044/MNAS5JME5GSFT30. Is this on your list?
In the scsi readout it is not A044, rather A0A4
You can also go into advanced power options from the main power options settings and adjust the hard disc options to never sleep and the USB options, set to disable; worked for me...I guess. My External Seagate 1TB no longer goes nite nite lol. Windows 8 has a pretty interface....for a tablet or phone. You guys should consider a "classic view" style desktop with the options to alternate between standard windows 8 start menu and the previous OS's that we all know so well and love so much. Windows is famous for a fluid navigation of the OS & filing system but the greater majority of that is tossed right out of the windows for us old schoolers who primarily navigate w/keyboards; we shouldn't have to have this crappy design force fed to us. Very unpleasant surprise after starting up my new HP machine; I'll certainly and THOUROUGHLY scan the reviews before buying another Microsoft product.
