External drive gets dropped

[Rudi]

Hi,

I have this frustrating problem where my Samsung External Drive just gets dropped from File Explorer if it is idle for a minute or two. In order to get it showing in File Manager again, I need to pull the USB plug out and reinsert it. Having read up on the net informed me of a power management option that I can switch off (second Image). I did this (for all my USB ports), but the drive still gets dropped!

The only difference between this drive and my others (which do not get dropped) is that this one gets power from the wall (IOW: it's not USB powered). Is there another setting or something I can do to prevent the drive letter from dropping? It never used to do this in Win7, but since Win8.1, it has been doing this with some annoyance!

TX for any assistance.

2014-01-01_22h33_43.jpg

usb-power-management.jpg

[viking33]

Strange. I assume you have tried a spare USB port(s) if you have any?

[Rudi]

Strange. I assume you have tried a spare USB port(s) if you have any?

I have yes. The drive letter gets dropped irrespective of the port. (And I did change the power setting for all the USB hubs in Properties).

[DaveA]

Are you using a computer port directly or do you have a HUB between the drive and the computer?

[Rudi]

Its plugged directly into one of the ports on my laptop.
Having done more digging, I came across the setting in the PC's power management dialog. As in the image below, I also disabled this.

It seems to have improved to the point that it hangs around longer, but I have noticed that whenever I open Device Manager or Disk Manager (in the attempts to check the drive status or change further settings) that the drive in Explorer immediately drops when one of these apps refresh.

I hope this spawns new ideas or triggers a solution...

TX

2014-01-02_18h43_19.jpg

[Rudi]

I found a RESOLUTION...

I am happy to report that I have resolved the issue with a very well documented blog report from the Microsoft Windows USB Core Team

Apparently there were some changes made to the Power Management in Windows 8.1 as quoted below:

This issue may occur because of power management improvements that are introduced in Windows 8.1. These improvements help reduce power consumption and extend the battery life of mobile computers. If the USB device presents itself as a Human Interface Device (HID) and there is no app accessing the device, Windows suspends the device.

There are fixes that will be added to updates as mentioned, but in the meantime, you can follow the steps in this article:
After installing Windows 8.1, my USB drive disappears or file transfers stop unexpectedly…

Since I already applied the settings in the Power Options, I skipped this first section in the article and went straight into the Registry Hack at the heading: To disable suspend on idle for this device
The steps are very informative and will help to resolve the issue (there are many confirmations in the comments section below as I can agree to :))
One thing to clarify:
In step 5, the article isn't very clear and you might think to right click on the blue highlighted entry, but it's NOT on that, but rather on the label above it called USB Mass Storage Device

5102.clip_image0064_thumb_4A61194D.jpg

This is a registry change, and if you are not comfortable with it, the team has developed a PowerShell script to disable suspend. This is a bit more automatic but I did not use it, so I cannot comment on it.

So far my drive is working great and has not dropped at all...even with actions I have done that caused it to drop before...
I'm all smiles!!!

Edited to change Step number in description above from 4 to 5.

[HansV]

Thanks for posting the solution - it will help others too!

[John Gray]

You could run a tiny BATch file to do a DIR of the USB drive letter every minute or so...
:loop
dir u: > nul & ping -n 61 127.0.0.1 > nul & goto loop

[MSingh]

Hi,

Is there a similar fix for Windows 7 Professional ?

Kind Regards,
Mohamed

[HansV]

See if Windows 7: USB Selective Suspend - Turn On or Off helps.