External USB hard disk keep waking up since upgrading to windows 10

amirn · 28 Jan 2020

Hi,
I have an external hard disk connected via USB. The disk has a built in feature that put it to sleep after 10 minutes if it was not accessed.
While I was using windows 7, the only times the disk was waking up were when I was accessing it, however since I've upgraded to windows 10, the disk keeps waking up many times a day either while I'm using the computer or away from it.

Is there a way to know what is waking up the disk?
Are there any services or scheduled tasks I should disable to avoid waking it up?

I'm using Windows 10 Pro 1909

Thanks.

amirn · 25 Feb 2020

I've noticed that one scheduled task that wakes my USB Hard Disk is "RegisterDeviceProtectionStateChanged".
Does anyone know what it does and if I can disable it or reduce it's running frequency?

btw, why was this thread moved here? it's not really a hardware or driver issue as far as I can tell.

Thanks.

klepp0906 · 27 Mar 2020

this problem crops up super often.

its a huge crying shame windows doesnt allow you set a drive for data and not touch it. To be fair, its often something 3rd party thats doing the deed though.

I just had to alter TortoiseSVN & TortoiseGit cache to stop crawling my drives periodically and waking them. I'm currently looking into voidtools everything for also being responsible.

Theyre waking less frequently but still waking when im not touching them. Heck i just opened vmware and my externals spun up. go freaking figure.

You can be helped in this awful endeavor by using process monitor if your familiar. Just set the filter to path - drive letter - include and let it rip.

watch for it to wake and what was accessing it.

go from there.

Matthew Wai · 28 Mar 2020

amirn said:

"RegisterDeviceProtectionStateChanged".
Does anyone know what it does and if I can disable it or reduce it's running frequency?

1. Right-click on the Start button-->Windows PowerShell (Admin)
2. Run CMD
3. Run the following command:

Code:

takeown /f "%systemroot%\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceDirectoryClient\RegisterDeviceProtectionStateChanged" /a >nul 2>&1

4. Run the following command:

Code:

icacls "%systemroot%\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceDirectoryClient\RegisterDeviceProtectionStateChanged" /q /c /t /reset >nul 2>&1

5. Run the following command:

Code:

schtasks /change /tn "\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceDirectoryClient\RegisterDeviceProtectionStateChanged" /disable >nul 2>&1

6. Run the following command:

Code:

icacls "%systemroot%\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceDirectoryClient\RegisterDeviceProtectionStateChanged" /inheritance:r /remove *S-1-5-32-544 *S-1-5-11 *S-1-5-32-545 *S-1-5-18 >nul 2>&1