Question External Hard Drive keeps disconnecting

Mar 24, 2022
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Hello people,

A couple months ago I built a pc. My motherboard is MSI Mag B560, the case is Thermaltake G33 and the psu is TR2 S 750w.
Since the day I built it, whenever I connect an external hd it keeps disconnecting and reconnecting occasionally. It doesn't matter if I actively use the disk or it is just connected sitting idle. It happens in irregular intervals. And it only happens with hard drivers, flash drives seems to be working just fine.
I'm plugging these disks to case's usb ports, both usb 2 and 3 ports have this problem.

I also have a rgb keyboard and a mouse plugged in motherboards usb 2 ports. Sometimes (it happened only 2 times) when I connect the external drive, I lost power to keyboard and mouse too.

I tried two different psus (fsp and thermaltake, both are 750w) and this problem occurs in both. I don't have any power problem for any other parts and there is no error messages or lights anywhere. CPU, GPU, SSD and case rgb seems to be working just fine. And when I check the voltages in msi center all of them seems to be in order.

When I searched in Google I saw a suggestion saying that I should disable legacy usb support in bios. I did that but no help.
I also disabled power saving mode in device manager's power management tab for all usb drives. This is also no help.
I also checked for the updates in device manager, msi center and windows update but there are not any.

Thank you in advance, I hope I can get rid of this problem without sending any parts to warranty.
 
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Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
Make and model External HDD?

Does the external HDD work on other known working computers?

Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer for any error codes, warnings, or even informational events that can be associated with the disconnects.

As I understand your post the external HDD is being directly connected to the host pc via one or more of the host pc's USB ports - correct?

If possible try connecting via an independently powered USB hub.

My thought is that the host pc's USB ports are not able to consistently provide power and/or enough power to the external HDD.
 
Mar 24, 2022
2
0
10
Make and model External HDD?

Does the external HDD work on other known working computers?

Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer for any error codes, warnings, or even informational events that can be associated with the disconnects.

As I understand your post the external HDD is being directly connected to the host pc via one or more of the host pc's USB ports - correct?

If possible try connecting via an independently powered USB hub.

My thought is that the host pc's USB ports are not able to consistently provide power and/or enough power to the external HDD.

Thank you for your reply.

One of my hard drive is Toshiba Canvio Basic 1.5Tb, and the other one is my old laptop's hard drive which I turned into and external one with a Ugreen branded case. They are both 2.5 inch hard drives with USB 3 connection. Both have this problem even when only plug one of them.
I have been using these hard drives for years. Before this desktop, I was using them on my laptop and I didn't have any problem before.

I checked for both Event Viewer and Reliability History, there seems no events relevant to this situation.

As for your second question, yes I am plugging the hdds directly to my case's front usb ports.

I don't have any independent powered hub, so I can't try that unfortunately.

Is it normal for psu or motherboard to be not able to provide enough power?

Edit: I get this event whenever hard disk is reconnected: Volume "E: (\Device\HarddiskVolume17) is healthy. No action is needed."
 
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