Weird behaviour with usb drive

I use a mini-pc for streaming. Ir runs Win 8.1 Bing. I have a usb drive attached for saving streamed files.

Much of the time, the external drive works like any other, but frequently Windows has a hard time seeing it. If I try to access it with Explorer, a horizontal progress indicator pops up near the top of the screen, and very, very slowly creeps from left to right. It can take a minute or more for the indicator to reach the right side. During this time and sometimes even after, any attempt to access the drive is met with a 'drive not found' error, though the drive letter is clearly shown. I'm not sure what the progress indicator is supposed to be for. I don't see any messages or other information, just the bar slowing moving across the screen.

If I unplug and replug the drive, it works immediately. I can also sometimes get it to work by clicking back and forth between the drive letter and another folder though this does not always work.

This is an annoying situation even when accessing the drive manually, but it is much worse when I want to record something and Windows insists there is no drive.

The drive is a standard external usb drive. I'm not sure if it has to spin up but even if it does, that would take only a few seconds at most. I have also used the drive with other devices and never had this problem. It only happens on the streaming computer.

I am not very familiar with Windows 8.1 and have only ever used it on this one computer. I am wondering if there is a setting or hack to stop it from doing whatever it is doing. I just want to be able to click on the drive and have it respond. Can anyone offer more insight into this?

 

rikki, I found this link: Fix Slow Performance Issues in W8.1
Neil.

 

Thank you very much. It does seem like it could be related to indexing. Win 8.1 is a little different than 7 in this regard so I just disabled the service. I don't really need it anyway. Since the problem does not occur all the time I cannot yet say if this fixes it, but if it is still okay after a week I will assume it has been resolved. Thanks both of you for the helpful suggestions.

 

Are you running programs from your external hard drive. I used to and had the same problem. I called WDC. I was told External Hard Disk Drives are not designed to be used as an extension of you internal hard disk drive as they are prone to failure if used for extended periods of time to run programs as they tend to run hotter than internal hard disk drives.

 

The external drive has only ever been used as a data drive to store and play videos. It has never been used to run any program.

 

It was not designed to play videos. Only to store data, OS images, photos and to back up your system. I know from experience. Playing videos is how I fried my external hard disk drive. By doing so even though I registered the product with the manufacturer it still voided my warranty. But that was a few years ago and a very expensive lessen to learn. Maybe with todays new technology you can play videos, but for me I will never try playing videos again on an external hard drive. It's your drive and your decision.

 

That is news to me. I have never heard that said before. If you can't actually use the drive for anything, what is the point of having it? In any case, even if this is true, I wouldn't stop using it in this manner. My streaming computer is a mini-pc, with only a very limited amount of drive space. I can't increase that and I also can't add an internal drive. If I can't expand drive capacity with an external drive, then I might as well give up on the whole system. I don't see how I have a choice.

 

I thought about this some more and I am puzzled. As far as I know, most external USB drives are identical to internal drives, they are just in a USB enclosure. So why would this make any difference? I wonder if WDC wasn't just trying to worm out of their warranty obligation. As it happens, the drive I am using at the moment is in a sealed unit, but another one I took apart some time ago was just an ordinary SATA drive, like many others I have seen. I also used to use IDE drives in enclosures for the same purpose and they came straight out of some desktops I cannibalised. So what is the difference?

 

All I can tell you is what I experienced and what WDC told me. The story is true. I'm not in the habit of posting false information. As I pride myself on my honesty and integrity. But you are entitled to your opinion. Well anyway good luck.

 

I wasn't accusing you of posting false information and I apologise if I created that impression. I was just trying to understand what the difference might be.

 

The problem has not occurred since I disabled the indexing service so I am marking this resolved.

 

External drive not available

I have a problem with an external usb drive that is really making me crazy. I posted about this earlier, then I thought it was fixed, but now it's back worse than ever.

I have a mini-computer used for streaming that is running Windows 8.1 with Bing. Because it is a mini-computer, the hard drive has only limited capacity. For that reason I use an external usb drive for data storage. It mainly contains films and videos and is also used for video recording.

The equipment is powered off at night. When it is powered up again, Windows usually (but not always) refuses to recognise the usb drive. The drive letter is shown, and if I click properties it correctly reports the size of the drive and the amount of space that is free, but if I try to open the drive by left-clicking on it or using the context menu, I get a 'drive not available' error. It won't list any files or folders and I cannot click on anything.

This does not happen every time. Occasionally the drive appears to work normally. But most of the time I get the message that it is not accessible. I don't know what causes this difference. I have assigned the drive to a permanent letter so it is always drive 'Z'.

When this problem first occurred I tried the standard recommended solutions. The main one is to turn off thumbnails and set all files to icons only. This prevents Windows from trying to create thumbnails for all the many video files, which seems to be the usual reason for the 'green ribbon of death'. However, this makes no difference for me. Another solution that was supposed to fix it once and for all is a Registry patch, but that also has no effect in my case.

Thinking the problem might lie with Explorer, I installed a third-party file manager (XYplorer) but the problem still occurs. The only difference is that I no longer get the green ribbon of death. Instead it just keeps saying the drive is not accessible. When this happens, nothing I do seems to make any difference. The only way I can get Windows to recognise the drive is to physically unplug it and replug it. As soon as I do that, it magically starts working. All the files and folders instantly appear and everything can be clicked on normally.

I have checked the drive with other computers and devices and it works normally. I am only getting this with the streaming computer. This is really frustrating me. Somehow Microsoft always seems to manage to stick this kind of pointless, stupid, intractable sort of problem into every OS version they release. I don't understand how they cannot be aware of this since there are complaints about it all over the Internet. If anyone has a solution that actually works I would be extremely grateful to know what it is. As a last resort I will try upgrading to 10 but I am afraid that will just be opening another can of worms. Everything else works as I want it to. It is just this unbelievably irritating external drive issue that is destroying any enjoyment I might otherwise be getting from this. There has to be some way to fix this.

Apologies for the rant, but Windows sometimes does this to people.

 

Well you are blaming MS for a problem with one PC but it works on all the others. This is somewhat confusing. What versions of Windows do all of them run?

 

Sorry to hear your system is still not working properly. I would recommend that you stay with W8.1 OS until you have fixed your problem otherwise the problem will be migrated to W10 with the Upgrade.
It might pay to give us all your mini-comp specs as this will help in diagnosis. Neil.

 

I have computers running XP, Vista, 7, 8.1 and 10. I have also used the same drive on a satellite STB without problem. The mini-pc is a Pipo x7, running a version of 8.1 called 8.1 with Bing. Here is the blurb: Pipo X7 Intel HD Graphics Baytrail T Z3736F Genuine Windows 8.1 Quad Core Mini PC TV Box 2GB DDR3L 32G. According to research I have done the problem I am having is not uncommon and seems to go as far back as Vista but none of the solutions I have seen so far work for me. Why is it that the drive works immediately if it is unplugged and replugged but otherwise Windows cannot read it? Why does it work sometimes but not other times? I have no idea.