External HDD Causing USB Issues

cae009

Honorable
Dec 9, 2012
18
0
10,510
So I have determined that for whatever reason when the computer starts with the 1TB Western Digital powered on that all hell breaks loose, The keyboard will stop working, and/or the xbox 360 controller will stop working, or my sound ports will not send sound to my razer chimeara headset, and the External HDD also will not show up in My computer until i unplug the power and plug it back in to the external. So what could be causing this I'm worried its the PSU is not enough but im hoping someone can say that I'm wrong and a 650 Watt Corsair Enthusiast Series is good enough for my computer and that I may need to back up my external and get it replaced?

The specs for my computer are as follow
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
CPU Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz Bloomfield 45nm Technology
RAM 12.0 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 530MHz (7-7-7-19)
Motherboard EVGA X58 SLI FTW3 (Socket 423)
Graphics Acer S231HL (1920x1080@60Hz) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Hard Drives 119GB OCZ-VECT OR SCSI Disk Device (SSD)
Optical Drives SONY DVD RW AW-G170A ATA Device
Audio Realtek High Definition Audio

If you need anymore information as feel free to ask, Razer Naga Mouse, CM Storm Trigger Keyboard, AfterGlow 360 Remote, and Chimaera headset... not sure what else you would need, really would like to get this fixed as I need the External for Storage and I've invested too much into this machine for these problems. If it is the PSU, I would like to get some recommendations for another one. Price not really an issue but prefer to keep it up under $150 if possible, but I will pay what I must to have this thing running properly.

I tried this fix as suggested by Hedwar2011

Do the following:
1. Go into Device Manager (however it is you get there)
2. Expand Universal Serial Bus Adapters category
3. Right click each of the USB Root Hubs (one at a time mind you)
4. After right clicking, choose uninstall. The computer will think for a minute and it may prompt you to reboot. DO NOT reboot until you've removed all of them.
5. Once you have all of them removed, reboot the computer.
6. After the reboot, Windows should rebuild all the USB Root Hub drivers so it may take a minute. It is also best that nothing is plugged into those ports for the time being.

Once the process is finished, go ahead and try your device again.

It could potentially be the computer turning off the ports to conserve power being used.

Not sure if you know how to check each of the USB Root Hubs to see if that is the case. Its real simple to do:
1. Go back to where you can see all the USB Root Hubs in Device Manager
2. Right click each one separately, choose Properties.
3. When window loads, click on Power Management tab.
4. Make sure that check box labeled "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" is unchecked.

And it seemed to fix the problem but this morning when I booted my computer back up the same issue occurred. So on to other possible solutions.
 
Do not recommend plugging a HDD into a single USB port. USB2 is limited to 0.5 Amps which equates to ONLY 2.5Watts. Many HDDs will exceed that on start up and many will exceed that when it performs a write/read operation. This was increased with USB3. Has NOThing to do with size of PSU as this is a spec for USB ports on MBs.

They do make a two headed cable that allows the HDD to plug into 2 seperate USB ports increasing the power provided to the drive. However my preference is to plug the HDD into a POWERED usb2 Hub. Most powered hubs provide up to 2 Amps (10 Watts)
 
Yes, the external HDD does have its own power source, I have to unplug the power cable from the External for the other usb devices to start working properly and I can usually plug it back in once Im inside windows and everything is running and it will work fine til i try to shut down where the computer will hang up until i remove the power from the external hdd again.
 
Run diagnostics on the drive just to verify that there isn't a hardware issue.

My second thoughts - I counted 6 different USB devices connected to the computer - have you tried startup/shutdown with different combinations of those items? There could possibly be an issue with one or more of the USB items creating an issue with the other devices. Try it with just keyboard, mouse and HDD attached, if all goes well, add items until you see the failure consistently. On the failure, remove the last item added, and see if all components can be installed and startup/shutdown is successful.

I do not think it is power or the usb hub driver as an issue.
 
There is probably a driver conflict with one or more of the USB devices and the hard drive - or it is possible that with all of the devices plugged in, the power requirements are creating issues with the hard drive.

It may take some time to verify which devices are creating the issue - maybe a powered USB hub to attach a few of the devices may help.
 

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