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External hard drives do not reconnect after Windows 10 laptop comes out of sleep mode

Anonymous
2018-01-23T20:55:28+00:00

I have 2 4TB WD external hard drives connected to a Windows 10 laptop. My Ext HDs are recognized upon initial boot-up or refresh, but once the computer goes to sleep mode and then comes out of it, the drives are not seen until I restart or re-boot my laptop.  This causes havoc with my scheduled backups since it can't find the devices where the backups are to be written.

Are there any settings in Windows 10 that I could apply to make the system recognize my Ext HDs after sleep mode???

Moved from: Windows / Windows 10 / Sleep and Power on/off

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. @CmdrKeene 90,616 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-01-23T21:58:09+00:00

    There's no settings for this, what you are seeing is not how it should work, so let's try to fix the problem you've encountered.

    As a troubleshooting step, try coming back from sleep mode and then unplug-replug in the drive.  Does Windows detect it?  Does it make the "something just got plugged in" sound effect?

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-03-23T13:35:19+00:00

    If you have any of the WD Wares (wd quick view, wd drive utilities, wd security) i found that when i put my computer to sleep it also locked the external hard drive (windows 10 64-bit, 4tb WD External) so whenever i would get out of sleep mode and try to access my hard drive it would say access is denied when i tried to open anything. I found opening WD Security and unlocking the hard drive fixes everything that denied me access to my hard drive upon waking after sleep.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-01-23T22:35:06+00:00

    After coming back from sleep mode, I unplugged and re-plugged in the drives.  It did make the sound effect you described.  However, neither drive is listed in Windows Explorer.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-31T02:03:43+00:00

    Thanks for getting back to me.

    I checked Device Manager - all my drives were listed under Disk Drives. I also looked at what was listed under USB Controllers. Then I let my laptop go into sleep mode. I waited for about 3 minutes before waking it up again. I rechecked both Device Manager and USB Controllers and everything looked the same. However, when I went to File Explorer and tried to access my 2 WD MyBook external hard drives, I get a "Location is not available" alert box that says "H:\ (or I:) is not accessible. Access is denied."  I have a WD Passport drive that wasn't available either but I initiated the WD Unlocker utility and it opened up.

    I turned the "sleep mode" option on the MyBook drives off several days ago since I didn't want them to go into sleep mode unless the laptop initiated it. I have both of these drives set to auto unlock when I log on to my laptop.

    Thanks!

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  5. @CmdrKeene 90,616 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-01-31T01:22:30+00:00

    Alright -- let's check device manager.  If you could, first open it before sleep and check out the drives (they may be under drives or USB devices).  Then you don't even need to close device manager.  Just go to sleep mode, wait maybe 60 seconds for baseline, then wake up and see what changed for those devices. If the display in Device Manager doesn't refresh, click the "Scan for changes" button on the toolbar, which has a magnifying glass icon in it.

    You can get to Device Manager quickly by either right-clicking your Start button, or by typing WindowsLogo+X, then tap M.

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