How to prevent USB hard drive from sleeping?

[Silver0066]

The Power options in Control Panel for the Surface do not have a setting for drives.

Is there anyway to stop the drive from sleeping or change when it sleeps?

Many thanks,

Silver

 

[kundas1]

well you can goto the power config settings then goto advanced and change when it goes to sleep, but of course you probably already aware that will impact battery life... unless you leave it plugged in then there should be no worries...

 

[Silver0066]

Not true!

There is no option to control the hard drive sleeping in Control Panel, Power, Advanced, unlike the Window 8.1 64 bit that I have on my other computers.

Did Microsoft put a stripped down version of Win 8.1 Pro on their surface products?

 

[jnjroach]

Not true!

There is no option to control the hard drive sleeping in Control Panel, Power, Advanced, unlike the Window 8.1 64 bit that I have on my other computers.

Did Microsoft put a stripped down version of Win 8.1 Pro on their surface products?

A little over dramatic.....anyway...

No they didn't strip anything, people are not used to using a Connected Standby enabled machine, modern Power Management is very different from ACPI v. 4 or earlier....many of the "Stay Awake" Features are removed in a Connected Standby Enabled Device, as the System need to control the power profiles as much as possible.

You can do it through the USB Controller via Device Manager, but it will have adverse affects on the S0iX Power State.

 

[Silver0066]

A little over dramatic.....anyway...

No they didn't strip anything, people are not used to using a Connected Standby enabled machine, modern Power Management is very different from ACPI v. 4 or earlier....many of the "Stay Awake" Features are removed in a Connected Standby Enabled Device, as the System need to control the power profiles as much as possible.

You can do it through the USB Controller via Device Manager, but it will have adverse affects on the S0iX Power State.

I didn't mean to be dramatic. I just purchased this Pro 3 yesterday and I am installing programs from a powered USB drive that goes to sleep constantly. I forgot about the Power Management feature in Device Manager. Now fixed and will revert back when I go on battery.

Thanks very much for your help,

Silver

 

[kundas1]

ahh yes I forgot about the connected stand by feature thanks for clarifying jnjroach... I guess we can mark this as solved then

 

[Silver0066]

ahh yes I forgot about the connected stand by feature thanks for clarifying jnjroach... I guess we can mark this as solved then

Not solved.

It turns out that turning off power management for my powered USB drive thru USB settings in Device Manager did not work. The drive goes off about 10 seconds after I use it and it takes about 15 seconds to start up every time I access it.

Very frustrating. Does anyone know of another way to stop a Powered usb drive from constantly going to sleep? I am on a Surface Pro 3.

Thanks for any help.

 

[jnjroach]

If it is going to sleep during normal operations then something else is going on, if it is going to sleep after inactivity then that is a different matter all together. The Surface Pro 3 has a Power Management and Thermal Management Firmware (Separate Chip runs lower than the OS) that manages very low level operations. Also, can you screen shot which USB Root Controller you adjusted, the SP3 has a couple of USB Controllers.

 

[Silver0066]

If it is going to sleep during normal operations then something else is going on, if it is going to sleep after inactivity then that is a different matter all together. The Surface Pro 3 has a Power Management and Thermal Management Firmware (Separate Chip runs lower than the OS) that manages very low level operations. Also, can you screen shot which USB Root Controller you adjusted, the SP3 has a couple of USB Controllers.

Here is a shot of the USB Controllers from Device Manager. I turned off Power Mgmt in all USB controllers that had that tab available,ie, Intel USB eXtensible Host Controller and the USB Root Hub (xHCI).

The USB drive goes into sleep while the computer is working on the main drive.

Thanks for your help.

 

[nipponham]

Have you tried plugging in the USB drive to another pc? Just making sure that this is an SP3 issue and not an HD issue. In the meanwhile, you can use this utility as a stopgap measure. It writes empty files to the external drive at a frequency you can specify to keep it awake. Crude, but the principle is sound.

 

[jnjroach]

Is this a self-powered USB enclosure or does it have a separate power brick?

 

[Silver0066]

Have you tried plugging in the USB drive to another pc? Just making sure that this is an SP3 issue and not an HD issue. In the meanwhile, you can use this utility as a stopgap measure. It writes empty files to the external drive at a frequency you can specify to keep it awake. Crude, but the principle is sound.

What a great idea! Thanks very much for making me aware of the utility. I will try it today. Thanks to this forum, I have a better idea of the differences a tablet OS requires to maintain power. I was unaware of the Power Management and Thermal Management Firmware in the Surface.