External Drive Randomly Disconnecting

  • Hello, I am hoping someoen might be able to help with an issue I am having where my external media drive keeps disconnecting.

    The system has been running for several months but in the last few days my external drive has started disconnecting. I did a bit of googling and saw that this can be caused by a power issue so I swapped the drive to an enclosurre that has a dedicated power supply but the issue is still happening.

    Does anyone know where I could look for some logs or have any advice on what to try next for it?

    Any help would be greately appreciated.

    Edit: Not sure its also worth mentioning but after the drive disconnects it doesnt automatically remount, it has to be unplugged and plugged back in before it is mounted again.

    Edited once, last by Recharge (December 10, 2021 at 10:59 AM).

  • Are you sure it's not because the firmware of the drive spins it down after X period of inactivity?

    This might give you some ideas to try: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5211…e-from-sleeping

    Thanks for the link I will take a look and give some of the solutions in that thread a go.

    It could be firmware, do SSD drives often go to sleep?

    Could be a faulty data cable. One or two small thread fractures are enough to have the disk controller or PC go apeshit.

    Thanks for the reply, when I swapped to the powered external enclosure its using a different cable, would be surprised if two cables on two relatively new enclosures were having issues but ill see if I have any other cables around to test.

  • Regarding to possible HDD sleep, look at this thread - maybe you can play with the hdparm a bit to disable that feature etc.

    DMG
    April 4, 2017 at 12:16 PM