Windows 10: Continuous IO activity on external USB storage devices

Since the update to Windows 2004, all the USB external storage devices connected to my Gigabyte Z170x-UD5 TH machine seems to be in use constantly, ie the activity LED is blinking although there is no IO coming from the host.

We can see that the Host Read Commands in the Smart Attributes are slowly increasing. However, the disk performance in the device manager is at 0 KB/s.

We have reproduced this with different USB devices; LaCie Rugged SSD, Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSD, Seagate Backup Plus, Samsung T7 SSD.

Right now the only workaround is to disable the Real-Time Protection in the Windows Defender which is just a temporary workaround and probably not a good idea.

The consequence of this problem is that it creates unnecessary actions for the devices leading to a rise in the temperature of the device and, for SSDs, this can have non-negligible consequences on the SSD life time.

Can you please investigate and let us know whether there is a fix available?

Thanks.

:)

 

WD and NEC Electronics Collaborate to Promote USB 3.0 with New Storage Devices

WD, the world's leader in external storage solutions, and NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), a leading provider of semiconductor solutions, today announced that the companies have collaborated to promote the new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB) 3.0 standard, a next-generation interface to be used in a wide range of electronic devices including PCs, PC peripherals, and digital appliances.

USB 3.0 is capable of supporting data transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits per second (Gbps), which is 10 times faster than the previous high-speed USB 2.0 transfer speeds. With its higher speeds and enhanced power efficiency, external hard disk drives are the first SuperSpeed USB 3.0 devices to appear on the market.

As the first step toward WD's and NEC Electronics' goal to promote the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard, the companies plan to develop a USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) driver to deliver hard drives with very high performance, mass-storage capacity. UASP is a new industry-standard, high-performance mass-storage protocol being developed for SuperSpeed USB 3.0 to overcome the performance boundaries of the Bulk Only Transfer (BOT) protocol, which has been used for traditional USB 2.0 speeds. The new UASP driver will be used with NEC Electronics' USB 3.0 xHCI (eXtensible Host Controller Interface) host controller (part number µPD720200), which appeared on the market as the world's first USB 3.0 host controller in June 2009.

Key features of the new UASP driver:

• Support for the UASP mass-storage protocol
• Data transfer rate is enhanced by 30 percent, with optimized power efficiency and smooth interoperability, compared to the existing BOT protocol
• NEC Electronics' license program is available for any LSI (large scale integration) vendors who develop UASP-based LSI devices

"The wide adoption of external storage, for both expanding and backing up internal computer storage, highlights the need for faster interface transfer rates. The USB 3.0 interface offers a significant advance in data transfer speed," said Robert Caddy, Jr., vice president of engineering for WD's Branded Products Group. "We are pleased to collaborate with NEC Electronics as a leading supplier of USB host devices in the introduction of USB 3.0 technology to the storage market."

"Partnering with WD enables us to combine our USB transfer technology with WD's data storage technology and provide added value to our customers," said Masao Hirasawa, deputy general manager, Home Multimedia Division, NEC Electronics Corporation. "Starting with the new HDDs, WD and NEC Electronics are working together as the industrial leaders to expand USB 3.0 marketplace offerings with the highest quality and performance solutions while speeding time to market."

 

external storage device

Hi Janet,

There are several reasons which can cause this error in your computer. One of these is the specified network resource or device is no longer available. A power supply issue may be a cause. But also many issues may cause this problem. As a best advice, we
suggest that you plug your external storage device to another USB port. Please try to plug this device into the USB port which in the back panel.

Let us know if you need further assistance.

 

Symwave to Demonstrate USB 3.0 External Storage Solution at CES

A major update and commercial introduction to the USB technology has been long overdue. While most devices such as printers, MFDs and other office automation equipment seem fairly comfortable with the bandwidth USB 2.0 offers, with storage solutions where large amounts of data transfer is involved, USB needs a facelift, so much so that companies are slowly gaining interest in technologies such as eSATA.

At the upcoming CES event, Symwave is planning a demo of an external storage solution based on the new USB 3.0 "SuperSpeed" technology. The device it plans to demo could be an external hard-drive or an enclosure with USB 3.0 compliancy. With 10 times the available bandwidth (4.8 Gbps or 600 MB/s), the new technology looks to provide devices with both performance and backwards compatibility with older USB standards. The Symwave storage solution will be one of first devices the technology kicks-off with.

Source: Engadget