Portable Hard Drive Shuts Down...

[JimArneson]

My Seagate USB hard drive shuts down every couple of minutes when plugged into the Surface Pro 3.

This scenario...

• Surface Pro 3 (i7 256) plugged into external power.
• Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive (2TB) plugged into USB 3 port.
• Working in PhotoShop 2014 the drive causes a audible alert (bing... bong) every two minutes (estimate) after which explorer pops open (my desired action on drive start) on the screen.

I've gone into the obvious places to try to change this behavior but cannot find any solution. Any thoughts?

 

[kundas1]

does it do this with other HD? maybe your Seagate HD is done?

 

[malberttoo]

Hey Jim, welcome to the forum.

Does the drive behave this way on a desktop computer? Are you able to try it out? I wonder if the SP3 USB isn't delivering enough power to keep the drive happy.

On my own SP3, I have 3 external drives that work fine, but one that requires additional power if plugged into the SP3. If that's your case, I can tell you how to work around that problem.

 

[JimArneson]

The drive works fine plugged into a USB port on my desktop computer.

 

[ctitanic]

Sounds like a faulty driver.

 

[malberttoo]

The drive works fine plugged into a USB port on my desktop computer.

Ok so it's probably like mine, not getting enough juice from the SP3 USB port. What you need to do is find a computer store in your area, and get a USB "Y power cable". Or from Amazon, here's what it looks like - http://amzn.com/B003HHK576

So you plug the red part into another USB to get extra power. But since the SP3 only has one USB, then what a lot of people do is use the USB port on the SP3 power brick.

Or, buy a USB powered hub. The hub will come with it's own power brick for AC power, and you can plug your drive into it, and the hub into the SP3.

Does that make sense?

 

[JimArneson]

You're right it works fine with powered hub. I really want to have the option of using a non powered drive when I'm out on photography shoots. Has anyone here found a portable USB HDD that will run lee the Surface Pro 3 port?

BTW... Thanks for the attention you folks pay to users here. This forum is great!

 

[unruledboy]

that's why I bought a powered hub.... it can drive usb monnitor and hdd.

 

[malberttoo]

You're right it works fine with powered hub. I really want to have the option of using a non powered drive when I'm out on photography shoots. Has anyone here found a portable USB HDD that will run lee the Surface Pro 3 port?

BTW... Thanks for the attention you folks pay to users here. This forum is great!

Hey Jim, check out @Len J thread here, they talked a lot about different drives.

http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/best-2tb-external-usb-3-0-drive-for-sp3.10578/

 

[ZorMi]

[QUOTE="Has anyone here found a portable USB HDD that will run lee the Surface Pro 3 port?[/QUOTE]
My Transcend StoreJet 25H2 1TB drive works fine without additional power or Y-cable, connected directly to SP3 or through HooToo (not powered) USB hub. I get up to 100MB/s transfer.

 

[GreyFox7]

[QUOTE="Has anyone here found a portable USB HDD that will run lee the Surface Pro 3 port?

My Transcend StoreJet 25H2 1TB drive works fine without additional power or Y-cable, connected directly to SP3 or through HooToo (not powered) USB hub. I get up to 100MB/s transfer.

YMMV. The actual power draw varies some as does the power supplied. What works for one may not work for another.

Try a different drive... it could be the model your using uses a bit more power or it's just that particular drive. I don't know if anyone makes anything consumer oriented to measure the power with so its trial and error. A larger drive may have more platters which will require more power to spin. I'd say check the vendors site for specs to see if they list power used/required but I'm not confident they will include that information or how accurate it will be but one with a lower power requirement would in general be better than one with a higher power requirement.

Worst case get an external battery to supply power if you must be away from the wall

Welcome to the trials and tribulations of this new era of low power computing. In a few years everything will use less power in the meantime we have power hell.

 

[kundas1]

I use a non powered WD my passport ultra 2TB and it works flawlessly.. might wanna try that out