Karaoke Forums

I thought my external hard drive was failing, as it would disappear from My Computer during shows, and I would have to unplug it and plug it back in, press the button on the front, etc. etc. repeatedly to get it to re-appear. This is really annoying when a singer comes on stage and you click on play and ... then you spend 2 minutes fighting the computer.

So I got out my backup drive to update it with my new songs and music and while I was getting ready to copy everything, both the old and new external hard drives disappeared. At this point, I began to suspect something to do with the USB.

I eventually found a setting in Control Panel >> Power Options >> Edit Plan Settings >> Change Advanced Power Settings >> USB Settings >> USB Selective Suspend Setting.

I can't seem to find more information about this, but when I hover over it, it says "Windows Hybrid Hard Disk aggressive power saving mode," and it was enabled both when the laptop was on battery and plugged in. So I disabled it. Hopefully I do not have the problem anymore. Does anyone know more about this? Do you guys think it could be the source of my frustration?

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

Are you running any of your devices through a USB hub? I have found that my drives MUCH prefer a dedicated port.

No, I have them connected directly to the laptop. I have a Dell Studio 17 which has a generous number of USB ports, 3 on the left and I think 2 more on the right. I usually plug in the hard drive, USB power dongle for my TV converter, and a USB audio interface. Sometimes I use a Verizon Internet card and a mouse also. The problem does not seem to change based on what devices are plugged in, though. Yesterday it happened at home when I was backing up my hard drive, and the only USB devices hooked up were the 2 hard drives, both of which have their own wall-warts for power.

I thought the problem was going to keep happening last night, as the new hard drive did go offline once right at the start of the night, but maybe it was a fluke. It worked fine all night after that. Perhaps changing that setting helped?

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

I posted about this in another thread.. Yes, the power settings will cause the external drive to go to sleep.

On my system all options are disabled, or timer set to Never..

Seems to work..

I tested running mine through powered and non powered hubs; no issues with the powered hub, nothing but problems with the non powered hub. Direct is best but if you can't, powered seems to work okay... Using XP Pro still.

Mark