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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.
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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.
Thank you for the explanation.
I do not have a laptop and am not concerned about a saving plan. I am using a storage device for music and saving documents for work. the going to sleep is a complete pain for me. I have always had my lacie drive active, and that is the way I want to work. There should have been an option to allow a sleep process, not have it forced upon us.
Change was made to conserve power and increase the battery life of the system. In an age where system purchasing decisions are made based on how long it can run on battery power, every tiny bit of power saving matters. When an idle USB device is left unsuspended, it prevents entire upstream devices (hub, controller, power plane the host controller shares with other devices on the motherboard) powered up and that amounts to significant power wastage. Suspending an Idle USB device is not a new concept. Spec requires that devices handle this action correctly. Majority of other class drivers suspend devices automatically when the device is idle for certain period. See this list. We knew that suspending storage devices is going to impact some legacy devices. During our testing, we did find a small number of such devices and added hack flags for them. But we didn't expect the ecosystem to be so broken. We are actively working to resolve this.
In addition to storage device class,, we have also made a similar, but less aggressive, change for HID devices. For HID class of devices, a device has to opt in to be selectively suspended either through INF of MSOS descriptor. But if we see a HID device plugged into the system and no app or service has an open handle to do I/O, we consider that not just an idle but an unused device, and put the device to sleep. So far the impact of this policy change hasn't been as bad as the storage one. We did some HID devices stopped charging their own battery, and a few game controllers disconnect and reconnect every 2 seconds because they can't handle suspend action.
-This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
If you haven't shared the VID/PID, please do so at 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.
Thanks,
Eliyas
Follow the instruction on this page to find the VID/PID: 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
The VID/PID is on the parent of the USBSTOR device.
-Eliyas
