Windows 10: USB 3.0 external hard drive disconnects after a few minutes

I connect my USB 3.0 external hard drive to my laptop and it works but after a few minutes of not using it the disk stops spinning and when I to use it again my computer locks up and after 30-60 seconds it disconnects and reconnects some times. Else I have to pull it out. If I use the drive without a to long pause in between it work perfectly fine but as soon as the drive stop spinning and has to spin up that is where it happened. that feature in the power options turn on where the power to usb does not turn off. Any suggestions?

EDIT: I have an Idea I will look to see it I can change the hard drive shutdown time in properties. I not home yet I will let you know if that work

:)

 

Windows 10 ignores power settings for USB external hard drives

I have a seagate 2.5" 1TB USB 3.0 external drive, model NA423EPR, that will always spin down after only 3 minutes of inactivity on Windows 10. My previous computer had Windows 7, and on that OS, the same external hard drive would happily stay spinning 24/7,
always.

This hard drive has its own internal setting for spinning down after inactivity. It was set to never, but using a special Seagate tool I changed it to 1 hour to see if that would make a difference. But it didn't. It still spins down after exactly 3 minutes.

I am already using the "High performance" power plan.

USB selective suspend setting is set to "Disabled".

Hard disk is set to "Turn off hard disk after: On battery: 30 minutes; Plugged in: 60 minutes".

And yet it STILL spins down after exactly 3 minutes.

The following is worth also mentioning: This laptop computer (an Acer VN7-791G) has an SSD for the OS and an internal 2.5" mechanical hard drive for other storage. I noticed that the internal mechanical drive was shutting itself off after merely 20 seconds
of inactivity. The hard drive in question was a WD Blue 1TB WD10JPVX. I looked around and found tons of complaints about this hard drive model ignoring power settings and always shutting down after just 20 seconds. So what I did was, I opened the laptop and
I replaced the hard drive with an older 2.5" 320GB drive, and this one actually stayed spinning as it should.

But, the seagate external drive still isn't staying on.

Also, I should mention that the seagate drive cannot be left idle on a USB 3.0 port, because it randomly disconnects/reconnects. It never does this when it's on a USB 2.0 port, or when it is actively being used on USB 3.0.

I also looked at the Power Management tab for all USB root hubs, to make sure that the option "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" was unchecked, and they all were unchecked already.

Can someone please explain this? If this continues I'm going to have to install a
program that writes to my external seagate drive once every 2 minutes to keep it spinning, which is a ridiculous fix; but, if Microsoft will not help me, I'll have to do it...

So, how do we get started fixing this problem?

 

External hard drive not being detected

Thanks for the advice, but the external hard drive does not have a separate power cable, it is usb 3.0 powered. So I'm in a fix now as your solution will not apply in this case.

 

Did to try from Power Options ? Change the plan to High Performance as shown below ?
Just type in the box: Never

 

it's on never, I not sure if that condition applies to external drives

 

You might also want to look at the USB setting.

 

USB Selective suspend setting under the USB tab is off.

Edit: I found this program however I don't like there solution, they suggest that external hard drives go to sleep after 10 minutes. maybe there is not way to control the sleep timer on an external drive
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/preven...-sleep-windows

 

The only left that I can think of is the firmware from the interface board inside the enclosure is set to be that way to prevent HD over heating.

Also, have you installed the latest Intel Chipset drivers ?

 

I am not sure I going to install that now.
okay It's installed

 

I found on my system that with the drivers from Microsoft for a USB 3.0 controller the external USB HDD was disappearing.

After installing the ones from Renesas the issue disappeared.

 

I tryed installing the ones from Renesas but they are unsported on my machine it's worth noteing I am on my main laptop(Specs on the side)

 

My controller is from Renesas, see here how to find the drivers for yours- is from an affiliated forum
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