Windows 10: Why would external drive keep laptop hostage when in sleep mode

There is one external drive which turn off to save energy but problem is when the drive is off some time I can not work/use laptop.


Example: External drive is on, I am working on computer ok, when the external drive goes on sleep mode I could not use laptop unless external drive awake. When I say can not use laptop meaning, there is a hangout some time.


I do not know the technical things behind that behavior. I only know USB external drive sleep to save electricity energy. But question is why laptop hangs?


I shall be thankful if some share thoughts or enlighten me.


Thank you in advance.

:)

 

External hard drives do not reconnect after Windows 10 laptop comes out of sleep mode

Thanks for getting back to me.

I checked Device Manager - all my drives were listed under Disk Drives. I also looked at what was listed under USB Controllers. Then I let my laptop go into sleep mode. I waited for about 3 minutes before waking it up again. I rechecked both Device Manager
and USB Controllers and everything looked the same. However, when I went to File Explorer and tried to access my 2 WD MyBook external hard drives, I get a "Location is not available" alert box that says "H:\ (or I:\) is not accessible. Access is denied."
I have a WD Passport drive that wasn't available either but I initiated the WD Unlocker utility and it opened up.

I turned the "sleep mode" option on the MyBook drives off several days ago since I didn't want them to go into sleep mode unless the laptop initiated it. I have both of these drives set to auto unlock when I log on to my laptop.

Thanks!

 

ASUS Laptop Won't Wake from Sleep Mode

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.18363 Build 18363
System Manufacturer ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
System Model UX490UAR
System Type x64-based PC
SMBIOS Version 3.0

Problem: about 80% of the time, my laptop won't wake up from sleep mode via keyboard press or mouse move/click. I seem to be missing many common features in power plan too, even after fresh Windows 10 install.

Troubleshooting Steps:

1. Reinstalled Windows 10 (clean)
2. Updated all drivers
3. Replicated on multiple Windows 10 versions, updates
4. BIOS latest version
5. No USB devices attached, ever. Only USB-C power and bluetooth mouse
6. Disabled "fast startup" in control panel

 

Sleep mode

Hi Adam,

For us to better assist with your issue on sleep mode, we'd like to ask a few questions.

• Have you made any updates to your computer before experiencing this issue?
• What troubleshooting steps have you done so far?

In the meantime, we suggest that you refer to this thread and follow the answer of Andre
Da Costa to troubleshoot the issue with sleep mode missing.

You can also refer to this article that was
created by Andre Da Costa to enable sleep mode.

Looking forward to you response.