Why is Windows so stupid with USB3?

I'll preface this by saying that it is not a standard Windows gripe. I'm pretty happy with Windows for the most part.

Something that is driving me crazy though is the fact that Windows 10 (and 7) keep shutting off my USB3 ports while they are in use. That is to say, during a data transfer Windows will power down the USB3 port, causing my backup to fail. (I use an external drive over USB3 to backup)

What causes this behaviour? I am completely mystified.

I went so far as to go into the USB3 properties and made sure they were set like this:



However, every time there is a Windows update, it resets itself to "Turn off to save power."

How do I make the setting stick? And how do I get Windows not to shut off the USB3 port even when this setting is not enabled?

I would really appreciate some ideas at this point.

Thank you.

Hi Kari,

I checked Selective Suspend and it was disabled, so I started a backup. This was the result after two hours:



The drive seems to have unhooked itself. It is also no longer visible in Windows Explorer, but if I unplug the USB connector and plug it in, it re-appears.

I'm baffled.

Also could be an issue with that software ?

CountMike said:

It's possible that drive itself has own power saving options. Which one is it ?

It's a Western Digital 2 TB Blue series drive. I have tried other WD drives in the enclosure, including a 1 TB Blue, a 1 TB Black, and a 500 GB Black, as well as a Seagate 500 GB Barracuda. All do the same thing.

When the drive goes offline you can still feel the drive spinning in the enclosure.

I have also discovered that this does not happen when using USB2 in my PC. It only happens when I use the USB3 ports.

@storageman:

I don't think it's the software. It also happens on a large copy operation. It will fail while the drive is being written to.

I think I'm just going to suck it up and use the USB2 ports on my machine if I want this thing to work right. It's too bad, because the speed of USB3 makes the backup much shorter.

TairikuOkami said:

Have you installed Asmedia USB drivers?

Latest ASMedia USB xHCI and Root Hub Drivers Solved - Windows 10 Forums

Yes. I reinstalled them from the ASUS website and tried a new backup this afternoon. It just failed as I'm typing this.

I'll try again with the latest drivers that you linked.

Maybe some problem with the 12 V enclosure´s power supply.

@Gurn Blanston, Do you know the manufacture of your external enclosure ? The reason I ask, the problem your having is probably due to the chipset manufacture of the controller used inside of your external enclosure. I had a similar problem a few years back as your having, large file transfers to the device would fail and the drive would be AOL. After much testing I found the enclosure would work flawlessly when connected to a 2.2ghz cpu, but would consistently fail when used with my new I7 4.0ghz system. It ended up being that the chipset that was being used in the enclosure couldn't keep up with the faster systems. I believe its a combination of your FAST CPU & a slow USB 3.0 chipset inside your external enclosure. PS mine, like yours would work on the fast system but using only USB 2.0. It was painfully slow.