WD 4 TB external disconnecting on USB 3.0

[kenmo]

I have three external WD USB 3.0 hard drives.

One is a 3TB and the other two are 4TB. Both 4TB drives will randomly disconnect when plugged into a USB 3.0 port.
The WD 3TB is fine when plugged into USB 3.0.

Searching on the WD community forums reveals many users have this problem with the 4TB external drives. WDs solution is to plug them into a USB 2.0 port. Which I tried and I do not have the disconnecting issue however WD touts these drives as being faster via USB 3.0., so I'm not really getting what I paid for.

My computer is a home built unit by me, using an I5-2500K cpu, 16 gbs of DDR3 ram and a Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3-B3 socket 1155 mobo.

Anyone else having this USB 3.0 disconnect issue?

Thanks

[newpball]

WDs solution is to plug them into a USB 2.0 port.

Kind of says it all about WD.

I totally do not like those drives, they are connected through a proprietary interface and it is a nightmare transferring existing drives to and from this device.

I'd say avoid them completely.

[kenmo]

PS: i meant to add my mobo drivers and bios are the latest from Gigabyte.

[lingyi]

Try different cables and power supplies. I have a dozen externals (WD, Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi, 3 & 4TB) and some just don't like a certain cable or power supply.

Also, consider getting an add-on USB card, preferably powered. I was getting disconnects with my old card, switched it with a new one and I've run multiple externals from it at the same time with no problem. USB 3.0, especially onboard share a common power supply and bandwidth. If you're running multiple devices, you may be overwhelming the ports.
'

[lingyi]

*Delete* Duplicate post

[p_l]

I have three external WD USB 3.0 hard drives.

Anyone else having this USB 3.0 disconnect issue?

Me, but all three are 4TB - two are WDs and the third is an HGST Touro. That's the one that keeps disconnecting, in my case. My internal 4TB HGSTs have been rock solid, and my two external 4TB WDs haven't given me a problem in the two or three years I've had them, but that external 4TB HGST Touro keeps disconnecting, go figure. It eventually reconnects, but it's annoying. Yes, I've tried using different ports on the USB 3.0 card that all three plug into, but to no avail.

[kenmo]

HGST Touro are a WD company -- http://www.hgst.com/

[DarrellS]

I have a WD MyBook that has a green drive and the only way that I can keep it from going to sleep when I'm in the middle of transferring files is to either take the drive out of the MyBook (USB2,Firefire and eSata) enclosure and connect it directly to a Sata connector (my case has an eSata slot on top) or use the USB connection with a program called WD Drive Manager which keeps the drive from going to sleep or disconnect like you say. Instead of WD fixing the problem with the board in the eSata MyBook, they stopped making it and went to the USB3 MyBook.

I don't have the patience to wait on USB2 so I just took the drive out of the enclosure and connect to the eSata port but the software would probably do the trick for you. I never had the drive disconnect itself (go to sleep) while the WD Drive Manager software was running in the background.

[kenmo]

WD Drive Manager software? Do you mean WD Smartware? If so, I do have WD Smartware running but the bloody drives still disconnect...

[newpball]

.. take the drive out of the MyBook (USB2,Firefire and eSata) enclosure and connect it directly to a Sata connector (my case has an eSata slot on top)

Careful, WD uses some proprietary intermediate interface, I had tons of trouble with drives going out of those boxes to straight SATA and back.

[valvehead]

One potential explanation for the problem is that the Z68 chipset didn't have native USB 3.0. That means that you using the third party USB controller on the motherboard. Many of those early 3.0 controllers had serious issues, especially with random disconnects.

[kenmo]

One potential explanation for the problem is that the Z68 chipset didn't have native USB 3.0. That means that you using the third party USB controller on the motherboard. Many of those early 3.0 controllers had serious issues, especially with random disconnects.

You could be onto something. However my WD 3TB never disconnects. And the Seagate 2TB that I used prior to the WD 4TB was USB 3.0 and never disconnected... It is perplexing...

[DarrellS]

WD Drive Manager software? Do you mean WD Smartware? If so, I do have WD Smartware running but the bloody drives still disconnect...

Here is a screenshot...

[DarrellS]

.. take the drive out of the MyBook (USB2,Firefire and eSata) enclosure and connect it directly to a Sata connector (my case has an eSata slot on top)

Careful, WD uses some proprietary intermediate interface, I had tons of trouble with drives going out of those boxes to straight SATA and back.

That's why I'm forced to use the drive this way. Because of the proprietary interface that they refuse to update. I don't remember having problems with it in XP but if I remember correctly, Windows 7 has problems with older firewire and esata devices and instead of WD working on fixing the issue with firmware and drivers for the board in the MyBook, they dropped the MyBooks with Firewire and eSata and went with the USB3 MyBooks instead. They have a history of not fixing problems with existing products, forcing you to buy newer products or deal with the older crippled product. The 2nd generation WDTV media player is a good example.

If I ever have problems with the enclosure failing to work then I can just stick the drive in my other Coolmax enclosure. It's just a normal WD green drive. Had I known that, I probably would've bought a WD black drive or a Seagate drive and used the Enclosure that I already had. It just seemed simpler having a device that I didn't have to worry about changing drives that supported Firewire, eSata and USB. I would never intentionally buy a green drive.

[hello_hello]

I have a USB 3.0 PCI-e card which I think started out life as a NEC USB 3.0 Controller (in Device Manager) and it's now listed as a Renesas USB 3.0 Controller, I guess after I updated the drivers at some stage. Anyway.....

I had lots of problems with it initially (Gigabyte MB). The most annoying was after connecting a USB 3.0 drive, Windows would often pop up with a "this device can perform faster" message as though the connected device was plugged into a USB 2.0 port, and it'd run at USB 2.0 speed. If it did connect at USB 3.0 speed, it'd drop out constantly.

One day I discovered if I disabled CPU overclocking, the problem seemed to go away. That led me to re-enable overclocking and adjust the PCI Express frequency in the BIOS manually (instead of "Auto" I set it to 100Mhz, but you could try slightly higher or lower). Problem solved, I could over-clock again and run at USB 3.0 speed.

I mention all that as the USB 3.0 controllers seem to be a little sensitive to PCI Express frequency, so even if you're not overclocking, if you can change the frequency manually in the BIOS it might be worth a try to see if it makes a difference.

I've only connected two different USB 3.0 devices to the USB 3.0 controller. A 3TB Western Digital USB 3.0 drive and a USB 3.0 hard drive dock. The dock still disconnects occasionally. I probably should try fiddling with the PCI Express frequency at some stage again. I don't think putting any particular size or brand of drive in the dock makes it more or less likely to disconnect, but it only happens once in a while. Sometimes, I've connected the dock and it'll disconnect/reconnect within a short period of time. At the moment it's been connected for about three days without dropping out, as far as I know.

I'm running XP so I guess it's not exclusively a Win7 problem.

You definitely want to run at USB 3.0 speed if you can. It's way, way, way, way faster than USB 2.0. You should be able to transfer files at almost the same speed as if it was a SATA drive connected directly to the MB.

[kenmo]

WD Drive Manager software? Do you mean WD Smartware? If so, I do have WD Smartware running but the bloody drives still disconnect...

Here is a screenshot...

sorry but under C:\PROGRAM FILES \Western Digital i do no have the folder you have. Instead I have a folder named WD SmartWare

I checked and there is NO application or exe with the name in your screen capture...

[DarrellS]

WD Drive Manager software? Do you mean WD Smartware? If so, I do have WD Smartware running but the bloody drives still disconnect...

Here is a screenshot...

sorry but under C:\PROGRAM FILES \Western Digital i do no have the folder you have. Instead I have a folder named WD SmartWare

I checked and there is NO application or exe with the name in your screen capture...

I had to download the software from WD. It didn't come with a drive. There was no mention of it in the forums either. I just remembered having this software a few years back so I searched and searched until I found it.

Here is the download site...

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=204&sid=89&lang=en

[hello_hello]

I'm kind of remembering now, based on using other people's WD USB drives occasionally, that they create a virtual CD drive when connected to the PC, and you can open the Virtual CD drive with Windows Explorer and you'll find the WD SmartWare installer in there.
And I think, in order for the Virtual CD dive to be created, you need to let the drive install the SES drivers first. If they're not installed, I think you're asked about installing them very time you connect the drive. I recall connecting a friends WD drive to my PC, and I resisted letting it install anything for a while, but eventually the nagging wore me down and I let it install the SES drivers. Mind you the USB drives should work perfectly without them, as long you just connecting the drive as additional storage, but I'm pretty sure the SES drivers need to be installed for the WD SmartWare software to work correctly, whatever it does. I don't know as I've never installed it.

The SCSI Enclosure Services drivers (SES drivers) are described here, and you can download them from here. There's also instructions for recovering the WD software if need be. I don't the SES drivers are required for older USB enclosures (more than 2 or 3 years old, at a guess).

Mind you I really just wrote all the above as the drivers and software were being discussed and if I'm remembering correctly I thought it might help clarify how it all works. Chances are, it's got nothing to do with the problem.

I have a WD MyBook that has a green drive and the only way that I can keep it from going to sleep when I'm in the middle of transferring files is to either take the drive out of the MyBook (USB2,Firefire and eSata) enclosure and connect it directly to a Sata connector (my case has an eSata slot on top) or use the USB connection with a program called WD Drive Manager which keeps the drive from going to sleep or disconnect like you say.

Does the USB enclosure itself take a nap while you're in the middle of transferring files? Does the front LED flash or do whatever it does when the enclosure's in standby mode to let you know it's in standby mode? It'd seem a bit odd for it to take a nap while files a being transferred. I'm not saying it can't, just that it seems odd.

About 6 months ago my other half asked me to transfer a bunch of files to her WD USB drives. For several days I had a 1TB WD USB2 drive, a 2TB WD USB2 drive and a 3TB WD USB3 drive connected to my PC, and they were quite well behaved. The USB enclosures all took a nap after a period of inactivity, but accessing the drives always woke them up again and there was definitely no snoozing in the middle of transferring files.

The WD software couldn't be causing the problem, could it? I'm pretty sure at the time I let one of the drives install the SES drivers, but I didn't install any anything else.

I would never intentionally buy a green drive.

Why's that? I have quite a few of them. Mine are all standard internal SATA Green drives but I use them as external drives via USB and eSATA drive docks.
The Green drives run fairly cool and they're pretty quiet, which are good qualities for an external drive. WD probably use them in their USB encosures because convection cooling is adequate. They probably are a little slower than the Black/Blue drives, but it's all relative. They'd still be faster than the previous generation, lower capacity drives. And they're much cheaper than the Black/Blue flavours. According to their price list, my local PC shop (I'm in Australia) is currently selling 4TB Sata Green drives for $177. The same capacity in Black is $277.

[DarrellS]

The USB enclosures all took a nap after a period of inactivity, but accessing the drives always woke them up again and there was definitely no snoozing in the middle of transferring files.

The WD software couldn't be causing the problem, could it? I'm pretty sure at the time I let one of the drives install the SES drivers, but I didn't install any anything else.

I installed the software to try and keep the drive from going to sleep. The Drive went to sleep on it’s own and I could not get it to wake up unless I disconnected and reconnected the drive or restarted the PC but it didn’t matter because it would just go back to sleep after about five minutes.

Using the Drive Manager software was the only way that I could keep the drive alive but I had to use USB since the software wouldn’t recognize Sata connection (unless I had one USB connection). It works just like the Windows Remove hardware and eject media software in the system tray but it's just for drives.

Yeah, the whole problem is that the MyBook enclosure uses proprietary software/drivers for it’s board and no matter what you tell Windows to do to the drive, the board ignores it and the drive goes to sleep on it’s own. I could put the drive in my other enclosure (without the WD board) and it would work just fine but not the MyBook enclosure. I didn’t notice the problem when I had XP, just windows 7.

Another problem that I have been having with Windows 7 is programs slowing down or stop working and when I look in Task Manager, I have multiple explorer.exe files. I have to kill the processes and restart one. I Googled it and others have had the same issue but don’t remember how they fixed it. When it happens while I’m using Virtualdub, I have to kill Virtualdub and overwrite the vdlaunch.exe file with a new copy or I can’t get Virtualdub to start again. I’m tempted in dumping Windows 7 and going back to XP because Windows 7 seems to be full of bugs. That could be the reasoning for MS going to Windows 8 so fast. They’re the biggest offender for dumping versions instead of fixing then and forcing you to buy newer versions.

For the green drives, all the reasons you mentioned and I’m leery of buying 2TB drives or higher. 4TB is a lot of data to lose at one time. There are always good deals for black drives or Seagate drives on newegg. When I lived in Phoenix, I was always finding good deals at the local Fry’s Electronics. All of my drives are either WD Black or Seagate 1TB drives with 64MB cache. Looks like the new drives are SATA 6.0 with 128MB cache for $88 and 5 year warranty. I have one or two SATA 6.0 drives on a SIIG add-on controller card.

[hudsonf]

I use NoSleepHD to stop my external drives from going to sleep. Run as admin.
http://nosleephd.codeplex.com/

[newpball]

For the green drives, all the reasons you mentioned and I’m leery of buying 2TB drives or higher. 4TB is a lot of data to lose at one time. There are always good deals for black drives or Seagate drives on newegg. When I lived in Phoenix, I was always finding good deals at the local Fry’s Electronics. All of my drives are either WD Black or Seagate 1TB drives with 64MB cache. Looks like the new drives are SATA 6.0 with 128MB cache for $88 and 5 year warranty. I have one or two SATA 6.0 drives on a SIIG add-on controller card.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with green drives, granted they spin a little slower but for backup or read only storage they are great.

I do not understand your logic about drive failures, if you have 4 x 1TB drives you have four times as much chance that one drive fails compared to a single 4TB drive and obviously a 4TB drive is faster than 4 x 1TB drives.

Unless you have RAID (and even then it is iffy) you really do not need a SATA III controller card for mechanical drives.

[kenmo]

Thanks DarrellS but that WD utility did not resolve my issue. I've tried the WD utility and running it did not resolve the issue. So I purchased a USB 3.0 powered hub (yes a hub with it's own power supply) and that does not resolve the issue. The only thing that fixes the problem with these WB 4TB USB 3.0 drives is to plug them into a USB 2.0 port. Sorry Western Digital but that is not a resolve as YOU advertised these drives as being USB 3.0 and it is very misleading marketing...

[fritzi93]

Newegg has been offering that WD 4TB USB 3 external for $120 bucks for at least a month (in the emails they send me). I can't recall *any* drives by WD ever going for $30 a TB, or even close. Are they trying to get rid of them before this issue becomes common knowledge?

The occasional Seagate 3, 4, or 5 TB drive will briefly hit $30 a TB (or a little lower) when there's a promo, and Seagates are generally cheaper than WD hard drives.

Anyway, it does sound like the problem may be the enclosure controller. It wouldn't be the first time, and I've had a few flaky ones over the years.

So...why not bust it out and use as an internal drive? Or maybe someone experiencing this problem could give it a go with an aftermarket enclosure?

[newpball]

So...why not bust it out and use as an internal drive?

Tried that in the past as well and, well, I would not recommend it. It seems they do something to the drive buffering as well and I had issues with it.

If you want the most reliable mechanical drive get drives labeled as enterprise drives.

So...why not bust it out and use as an internal drive? Or maybe someone experiencing this problem could give it a go with an aftermarket enclosure?

But be careful as many cannot handle >2GB properly. Even if it 'seems' it works and you take out the drive and hook it straight to a STATA connector you may run into problems. I would only buy recently issued enclosures that clearly advertise it can handle 4TB or higher.

[fritzi93]

I hadn't heard about that before. I mean, I've got several hard drives that I took out of enclosures and use them internally with no trouble (funny thing that externals are often cheaper than bare internal drives). As far as I can tell they're identical with the same drives sans enclosure.

But I've only bought Seagates the last several years, so I dunno. The Seagate USB3 enclosures are no great shakes, and I wouldn't run the drives in them continuously (heat dissipation is poor), but they work okay for powering up only when transferring backups, etc. Never had one do what others on this thread have described.

As for aftermarket enclosures, well sure. Read the specs first (and maybe reviews as well).

[DarrellS]

For the green drives, all the reasons you mentioned and I’m leery of buying 2TB drives or higher. 4TB is a lot of data to lose at one time. There are always good deals for black drives or Seagate drives on newegg. When I lived in Phoenix, I was always finding good deals at the local Fry’s Electronics. All of my drives are either WD Black or Seagate 1TB drives with 64MB cache. Looks like the new drives are SATA 6.0 with 128MB cache for $88 and 5 year warranty. I have one or two SATA 6.0 drives on a SIIG add-on controller card.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with green drives, granted they spin a little slower but for backup or read only storage they are great.

I do not understand your logic about drive failures, if you have 4 x 1TB drives you have four times as much chance that one drive fails compared to a single 4TB drive and obviously a 4TB drive is faster than 4 x 1TB drives.

Unless you have RAID (and even then it is iffy) you really do not need a SATA III controller card for mechanical drives.

None of that made any sense to me. You like large Green drives and I don't. To each his own.

I have an older Gigabyte MB with no SATA III support and I have two SATA 6.0 drives so to get them to run at a higher speed, yes, I do need the SATA 6.0 controller card. Even though the SATA II drives are not supposed to run any faster with the SATA III controller, they do run a little faster.

[newpball]

I have an older Gigabyte MB with no SATA III support and I have two SATA 6.0 drives so to get them to run at a higher speed, yes, I do need the SATA 6.0 controller card.

Again you are wrong, there are no mechanical drives that can saturate SATA II.

[DarrellS]

Thanks DarrellS but that WD utility did not resolve my issue. I've tried the WD utility and running it did not resolve the issue. So I purchased a USB 3.0 powered hub (yes a hub with it's own power supply) and that does not resolve the issue. The only thing that fixes the problem with these WB 4TB USB 3.0 drives is to plug them into a USB 2.0 port. Sorry Western Digital but that is not a resolve as YOU advertised these drives as being USB 3.0 and it is very misleading marketing...

Sorry, it was worth a try.

I was going to recommend getting a different external enclosure for the drive but I'm seeing the same issue on the other USB3 enclosures. Even ones that don't need software. I'm thinking more and more that it is an issue with Windows 7 and until they fix the problem or the drive manufacturers can come up with a firmware that fixes the problem that high speed file transfer is just a pipe dream with these drives. I guess they figure that it is not a problem on their behalf since you can take the drives out of the enclosure to get them to work.

I think I'll stick a black drive or Seagate drive in the MyBook enclosure and see if it is a green drive issue. If everyone sent their drives back to WD and demanded their money back, maybe WD would fix the issue.

[DarrellS]

If you're saying that no mechanical drive reaches transfer speeds that they advertise then yeah but I have HD Tune Pro installed and the SATA 3.0 drives connected to the board are slower than the SATA 3.0 drives connected to the controller card and the SATA 6.0 drive connected to the 6.0 controller card is much faster than it is when it's connected to the 3.0 controller. I also use a file transfer software that tells me what speed I am transferring at.

I'm here trying to help the OP concerning a drive that keeps going to sleep. Not to argue with experts about HDDs. If I don't care for Green Drives, that's my prerogative. I'm not telling other users not to use then.

BTW, I didn't buy the controller card because I had a 6.0 drive because at the time I didn't. I needed the controller card because I needed the IDE connection that came with it since most newer boards only come with one. The 6.0 controller was just a bonus. My board has eight SATA connections.

[kenmo]

I've stopped fighting with this WD 4TBUSB 3.0 issue and have them now plugged into USB 2.0 ports. I really hoped the USB 3.0 powered hub would have fixed the issue. I would avoid the 4 TB WB USB 3.0 drives like the plague. But find it odd I do not have this issue with my WD 3TB USB 3.0 drive.