External hard drive turns off

[AttilaK]

Dear Experts,

I use a WD external hard drive connected via USB to a Dell Inspiron n7110 with Win7. The hard drive turns off after 2 minutes of its connection even when I'm active with input devices or files are being transferred. The hard disk will not be able to reconnect again until the laptop is restarted. It also seems undamaged as it works fine when connected to my desktop machine. NoSleep does not help. There is no such BIOS setting for changing USB device standby modes. Can you help me to keep my HD awake?

Attila

 

[MostWantedSoulRider]

Go to Device Manager. Expand Universal Serial Bus Controllers. Right click and select Properties for each one in the same branch. When they open a pop window, click Power Management tab (wherever its possible) and uncheck the first box. Hope this helps.

 

[AttilaK]

Thank you for your attempt to help me but there was no checked box there. I noticed that the driver was missing so I installed it, and also upgraded its firmware. Still turns off after some random time while watching a movie from it or copying files to this drive.

 

[chris_shadez]

If using a laptop, your power settings profile > under 'Advanced settings' will have an option for 'USB Suspending/sleep.' Make sure here, they are not set to sleep after a set period of time, set time to '0' to disable it.
Had this issue too and Power Settings profile was my fix on 2 HP DV7's

Secondly, if not tried this;
As for device manager settings, go into the device manager, >click on Universal Serial Bus Controler, >click on all/each each of the USB Root Hub, >click on the power management option and >make sure the check mark in 'Allow computer to turn off this device' is not checked
>Do that for every USB Root Hub device in device manager.

 

[AttilaK]

chris_shadez, thank you for the suggestions, but these were my default settings.
However today I was able to operate the hard disk without problem for hours by setting the hard disks to never turn off at special power settings. I don't know if it is was the reason, I keep testing it.

 

[chris_shadez]

glad it's sorted, usually always is power settings somewhere, be it motherboard, power supply profile or the devices' own power settings