[SOLVED] Flash drives still get hot despite PC being shut down

[FlowersForMegatron]

Whenever my PC is shut down and has been for a long time, (but still plugged in ofc) and I remove my flash drives from the front port (USB 3.0), they still are hot, having drawn power. This doesn't happen with devices directly plugged in to the back of the motherboard. I know some external HDDs still draw power, but why would flash drives?

Is this normal? Is it dependent on the device/flash drive manufacturer? This can't be healthy for the drive long term I suppose. Should I remove them every time the PC shuts down?


motherboard: gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H
flash drive: SanDisk 64GB (USB 3.0)
OS: Windows 8.1

Thanks

 

[R_1]

look in the BIOS for USB charging or similar.
with this enabled the computer will power the USB ports so you can charge a phone.
you may be able to disable this and this should prevent this. the unit is getting power but nothing to communicate with.

 

[Lutfij]

Go into BIOS and see if you have any charging options enabled. If the front panel connected USB drives are the ones that are ending up being hot then it's possible that either the board is delivering power(sensing a phone is changing) or the front panel connectors are faulty. You might want to see if changing the USB headers on the board changes your experience.

 

[FlowersForMegatron]

Ayo thanks I'll try it tomorrow and set the thread as solved if it works

 

[FlowersForMegatron]

OK, so I searched around for a bit, and there are a couple of options I could take to turn off the power of these front panel USB 3.0 ports. Turning off ErP in the BIOS, or turning off USB Selective Suspend in the Windows Control Panel.

But the thing is, I searched around for a bit and found out that it's apparently common for some motherboards to supply power to certain USB 3.0 ports while shut off (front ports, mostly). Since it seems to be a standard, and the options to turn it off would affect other things too, I'd rather not do it.

So I guess my final question is, is the continuous power bad for flash drives? Does it affect their longevity? I have important files on them and keep them plugged in almost permanently, drawing power.

Thanks.

 

[popatim]

Enable ERP in the bios; this normally turns off gigabyte's On/Off charge.