New Usb Ext 5tb Hdd Has Intermittent Behaviour

Greetings,

Sometimes it's "there" and sometimes it's not. My new 5 TB "G" drive. Most recently, Acronis True Image 2016 was doing either a backup or verification process that failed to finish because the G:/ drive was not available.

There were previously some disk errors that halted Acronis, so I did a low-level format since the big drive is new, and there's no data to shuffle. Also did a complete Revo uninstall of everything Acronis on my main desktop, and put all the Acronis programs (most recent build) back in fresh.

Maybe someone can tell me how to troubleshoot, or how I might be making some common error?

I have noticed that sometimes Windows' Disk Manager does not see my new G drive, yet if I yank the USB cable, then plug it back in, everything works. Why didn't it work in the first place? Is it turning itself off or something?

What should I do next?

I have also been having "Windows Explorer has stopped working" problems, and my "sleep" option is broken.

Desktop, Win7x64, 6 GB RAM, 80 GB SSD, two 1TB HDDs, a 300GB HDD (unassigned), and the new Toshiba 5TB USB 3.0 Ext HDD.

 

Poking around the web, I am starting to think it's some kind of Toshiba sleep function for the newer Convio (and older) HDDs. Some have been posting "keep awake" routines. If that's it, how do I determine how fast the HDD goes to sleep? 5 minutes? 20?

Advice?

 

Toshiba Tech Support is absolutely, 100% useless for this simple, easy question.
Perhaps someone here knows.
Or, perhaps someone has a phone number for Toshiba Engineering, or Sales or someone with more information than a company-supplied PDF.

Here's the question:

How long a period of inactivity occurs before a spin-down, or disk rest occurs?
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Product: TOSHIBA Canvio Desk 5TB USB 3.0 3.5" Desktop External Hard Drive HDWC250XK3J1

If I AM experiencing disk sleeping problems (why don't all my disks have this problem?) there are third party apps to write data at predetermined intervals. Without causing needless activity and disk wear, I'd like to determine what the maximum interval is.

I'd REALLY like this to not even BE an issue.

argh. prolly user error - lol?

 

Try the following:

• Go into Control Panel -> Power Options.
• Click 'Change plan settings' for the selected power plan.
• At the next screen, select 'Change advanced power settings'.
• Expand USB settings -> USB selective suspend setting and change the setting to Disabled.

 

Done.

Thank you again! I have been all over the Power settings at one time or another.
That setting would never occur to me...probably because I never had a USB-powered drive.

Any idea if that setting makes the drive spin forever?
(My other drives don't spin forever)

Again, thanks.

 

It shouldn't spin forever, the setting should just prevent the drive entering a low power state.
I suspect that your explorer hangs could be as a result of Windows trying to wake the external drive and it not responding.

 

Whelp, things looked good at first, yet I thought I'd wait a few days.
Sad to report, I still have an occasional explorer.exe hang.
(At least it fixes itself after the pop-up offers a fix).

What should I do next to fix it for real?

 

oops - wrong thread...