Windows 10: Windows 10 and corrupted/unmounted usb3 drives

I have had the wildest issue since around July 15th of 2020. TLDR- My pc is seemingly randomly corrupting usb3 spinning drives.


I have a PC build, used mostly for film work. It has 2 internal drives, one spinning one solid.


I also use a rotating cast of usb3 drives, some powered, others bus powered.


I was working one day in July when my software started behaving VERY strangely. Eventually it just said my source media was offline. I checked the drive and it was shown as connected in the "devices and drives" list of icons but had no storage bar under it. It was connected but had somehow become unmounted.


I ran chkdsk /f which brought it back but the work file I was in was gone, as was a random assortment of other files from the past few days. chkdsk /r or recuva, disk drill, or others did not bring the files back to life. I assumed it was that hard drive, backed everything up, and set to work on a new usb drive.


This new drive had the same issue when I woke the pc from sleep a few days later. Connected, not mounted, chkdsk, files gone. This has happened to around 7-8 different usb 3 spinning drives I have connected now. These drives do not do this on my macbook.


What is interesting, I have one usb3 ssd the rest are spinning disks and the usb3 ssd as well as the two internal drives are NEVER affected by this.


Does anyone have trouble shooting tips? A somewhat comprehensive list of what has been tried below:

- Swapped pc iec

- Multiple usb drives, power cables, usb cables, ports

- Swapped outlets

- Windows update

- Total Windows 10 reinstall

- Retimed RAM, slower

- Used Device Properties to set usb drive for quick removal

- Used Device Properites to update all usb drivers

- Used Power Options to create a custom plan that does not sleep hard drive or selectively suspend USB ports

:)

 

Windows 10 shutdown doesn't unmount despite......

Hi,

Thank you for the update and I apologize for the late response.

I appreciate if you could answer few questions to narrow down to the issue.

• 
  How exactly you are trying to unmount the drive. Is it through Command prompt or from Disk management?
  
• 
  What exactly happens when you try to unmount?
  
• 
  Did you receive any error message while trying to unmount?
  

I suggest you to try the steps given below and check if it helps.

Please close all the Windows before trying the steps.

• 
  Open Disk management.
  
• 
  Right-click the mounted drive that you want to remove, and then click
  Change Drive Letter and Paths.
  
• 
  Click Remove, and then click Yes.
  

Hope the information helps. Let us know if you need further assistance. We will be happy to help.

Thank you.

 

Windows 10 continually mounting and unmounting USB3 connected external Hard Drive and USB3 Memory stick.

Hi Delboy,

We would like to know if this problem only happens with your USB3 hard drives and USB3 port?

Let us help you isolate this issue. Since you mentioned above that the problem occurs after the last update, we suggest that you perform these steps and see if it helps:

Uninstall Windows update.

We don’t usually recommend that you remove any installed updates. However, if you must remove an update, you can do so from the update history.
Here's how:

• Select Start button and select Settings.
• Click on Update & Security.
• Click on Windows Update.
• Select Advanced options and click on
  View your update history.
• Click on Uninstall updates.

We will be waiting for your response.

 

Windows 10 continually mounting and unmounting USB3 connected external Hard Drive and USB3 Memory stick.

Hi Acelyn,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Unfortunately I have no USB2 Memory Sticks or External Hard Drives. To try in in my USB3 ports.

I can confirm it only happens connecting USB3 devices to my USB3 ports. Connecting any USB3 device to any USB3 port seems to trigger the problem.

Hopwever, There seems to have been a bit of a change in so far as the Mounting and Unmounting frequency is concerned. I remembered a trick / fix I used to use in the past to fix USB anomalies under Windows XP or 7.

Though those problems were mainly a USB port suddenly not recognising a device it was earlier happy with or being prompted to 'Insert the device in a USB 2 port for better speed' even though it was already in a USB2 port.

Well I used to go into Devices a delete all USB entries forcing Windows to re-load the drivers from fresh on the next reboot. This seemed fix most USB problems back then so I tried it.

Strangely the frequency seems to have now dropped to a Dismount / Mount approx every 10 minutes whereas it was almost continual before.

I have also been trawling through the Event Logs to see if there is anything there. I have looked at all the most common logs:

Custom Views> Admin, Performance, Windows and Windows Logs> System
etc

But there seems to be no entries corresponding to Mount / Dismount times.

Maybe I am looking at the wrong logs and need to look deeper? I have not looked in
Application and Service logs and especially not the Microsoft subset as it seems to go on for ever and I do not know what I am looking at down there...

If I leave a File explorer window open listing the root of the PC I can actually see the USB Drive / Memorystick being removed from the list of storage devices only to be put back again half a second later.

I am at a loss. Especially as deleting the USB devices seemed to (Illogically) partially fix the problem in as much as frequency is concerned.

Regards

Del

PS: I have not tried rolling back the update as I am not totally convinced the update caused the problem. I also noticed today that all my many rtestore points from BEFORE the update have disappeared! I was going to try a system restore but alas the was
only one system created restore point and that was after the Update :-(