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
    2014-03-12T14:45:10+00:00

    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

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-03-11T18:42:08+00:00

    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.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-02-16T18:02:35+00:00

    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?

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-02-09T18:40:44+00:00

    A similar problem here with WD 2.5" "My passport" USB 3.0 disk on Win8.1.  The problem is that the drive is in encrypted mode (via a helper USB CD device from which unlocker program runs). When the device is powered off, the unlocked state is lost, so further attempt to access the main disk drive fails.

    Such devices definitely must be addressed by the fix.

    -- pa

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