Problem recognizing external hard drive after sleep awakening

[sherwin]

I am running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit and have kept up with all Updates and latest drivers. I am having a problem with a Seagate 1 TB Backup Plus External Hard Drive connected to the USB port of my Asus Sabertooth motherboard. After waking up the system after sleep, the external drive vanishes from the PC. Web searching has shown me a fix in 2009 that was supposed to be incorporated into Windows 7. It either was never done, or it was not pertinent to my situation, since it made no reference to USB connection. The problem described then was that due to the large size of this drive, it did not respond soon enough to the awakening process, and thus was never seen.

Is there a more current fix for this, especially with USB connection?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello and welcome sherwin Mate does the problem still exist if the drive is plugged into a different usb slot.

Also does this still happen with other devices other than a drive? To check just reduce the sleep time down to speed up the process of checking.

Plus mate good on you for using some specs but they need to be a little more specific ie chipset on th e motherboard or the mobo version / model.

Use Speccy to find this out Speccy - System Information - Free Download

its free and a very useful tool to keep.

 

[sherwin]

I have not plugged the drive into a different USB, but I did plug my mouse into that port and it recovered fine from awakening after sleep.

My motherboard is an ASUS Sabertooth Z77 with Intel Ivy Bridge Revision 09.
I don't think this is a motherboard problem, since I have seen this problem reported
on the web for various combinations of motherboards and external drives. They key factor here is the larger external drives. The Windows wake up function does not allow enough time to fully check the drive, so it is never recognized.

I don't think altering the sleep time will help here, as the problem does not occur during the sleep activation, but rather on the wake up activation for which there is no control, I know of.

I am surprised Microsoft has not addressed this problem as it appears to be a generic one for all large external drives going through a USB port.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yep the sleep set up is not going to do anything - is the drive a powered one or from the machine? Personally I don't like any externals over 500GB but if you need it....

Yes I also agree that this is a prblem that should have been sorted by now as I gave away the 1TB I had because of similar problems.

I was just thinking maybe a powered USB hub might be worth a shot?

 

[sherwin]

The hard drive has it's own independent power supply.

I fault Microsoft on this one. Large hard drives are now more readily affordable and should be supported for the external types. It seems like an easy software fix to increase the time the drive is scanned before timing out. I believe the limit is now 10 milleseconds, so increasing it should not even be noticable to the user coming out of sleep mode. If Microsoft does not intend to fix this, they should put out warnings not to run large external hard drives with Windows 7. Strangely, I have a 1 TB internal hard drive on my PC which does not have any problems
coming out of sleep. It may be the USB driver that is at fault.
Windows 7

 

[sherwin]

Sometimes it pays to look at earlier experiences with this same problem. I looked at a post by Sardonicus on May 16, 2012 where he suggests going to the USB hub properties and deselecting the option to turn off the power to these ports, to save power. It took me 3 minutes to make the change and now when I come out of sleep mode, my external drives are there. Until a better fix comes along, this one will do the job. I don't think I will save much power by turning these USB hubs off.

Now why couldn't Microsoft suggest this in my numerous queries?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hiyya mate you did real well - top marks for trying and yep if it works (not broken) mate there is no need to fix it eh?