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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.
I'm experiencing these same issues, even after applying the February 2014 patches to my Surface Pro 1. It's an Iomega Livestrong USB 3.0 drive (circa 2011) plugged directly into the Surface. It worked fine under Windows 8, but after upgrading to 8.1 attempting to access or write to the drive causes File Explorer to crash and Windows says the HDD malfunctioned, even though it works fine when I plug it into my HP Pavilion dv5 running Windows 7 SP1. Windows 8.1 completely ignores the power settings for this device, and the registry hack did not work for me, if anything it made the problem worse, because the Wifi card started acting up too, so I deleted the registry entry for the HDD. Any ideas?
I am having the same problem with a different twist. I have my mini-USB phone charger plugged into one of my computer's USB ports. I leave my phone (Samsung Galaxy S3) charging away when I go to bed, and it's completely dead when I wake up in the morning. I have my computer set to never sleep, but the display turns off after 30 minutes. I thought it was something wrong with my phone, so I changed back to my previous phone (Droid Charge), and it's doing the same thing.
Hi, there:
I have the same problem with a cruzer memory stick - shuts off after a few minutes. When I click on its icon in file manager, the system starts reading that drive for appr. 1 min to get it back. Same routine, when I try to safely remove the stick. I disabled the power down for the root hubs in device manager - nothing changed. I'm not in a position to hack the registry. I downloaded nosleepHD. Is it safe to use that utility until there is a fix from MS?
I appreciate your comments
HenningCT
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
THIS COMMENT IS FOR MICROSOFT.
Eliyas, The update that came out did not resolve the issue you have been describing that it was intended for. I have posted numerous post with no responses. Many folks have given opinions and suggestions. I have tried everything that was similar to my usb 3.0 ports going to sleep and the only way to bring them online is to reboot. I have sent hours with Dell Tech Support and probably 20 p;lus hours with Microsoft Elevated Support who even went so far as to reinstall windows 8.1 yet same problem exist. Microsoft Elevated Support says nothing they can do and they do not know or can they find out who is working on. I have also spent time with Seagate as my external drive is a Seagate Backup Plus Desk 3 TB USB 3.0. All drivers and firmware are up to date. I have even spoken to Intel on my Chipset. Is Microsoft working on to create a fix to solve the issue on all of us out here who still have the problem that the last update in Feb did not fix. If so, about when will it come out and if possible can you email me on how to email or contact you. This is very frustrating. Please respond.
