KeepAliveHD is a portable application that writes a small text file after every user-defined amount of time to your external hard drive(s) in order to prevent it from going into auto-sleep mode. The developer was inspired by another open source tool called NoSleepHD.

Summary :

Have you ever encountered external hard drive keeps disconnecting and reconnecting issue? Do you know how to solve this issue? Is it possible to recover data from such an external hard drive? If you are interested in these matters, please get answers from this post.

Part 1: External Hard Drive Keeps Disconnecting and Reconnecting

Recently, we note such a question: external hard drive keeps disconnecting and reconnecting. How does this problem manifest? You can see the following real-life example:

Hi I'm having a bit of a problem here. When I plug my external hard drive in, Windows detects it, but after 5 seconds or so it starts disconnecting and reconnecting every second or so. Once a while I get prompts to format the drive.tomshardware.com

As mentioned in the above example, Windows may ask you to format the hard drive before you can use it when external hard drive keeps disconnecting issue occurs and you can’t open the drive successfully. In most cases, you don’t want to format the external hard drive directly because there are some important files on it.

In this situation, you will need a piece of data recovery software to rescue the data on it, and then take measures to fix this problem. So, in the next two parts, we will emphasize these two aspects.

Part 2: Recover Data from an External Hard Drive with Connection Issue

If you want to recover data from an external hard drive which is bothered by connection issue, you’d better select a reliable data recovery freeware. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is your good choice.

Now, you will learn the secrets to fixing 'hard drive not showing up' issue and to effectively recovering data from drive not showing up, etc.

Four Recovery Modules of MiniTool Power Data Recovery

Now, you may want to know: what can this software do for you?

This software has four recovery modules - This PC, Removable Disk Drive, Hard Disk Drive and CD/DVD Drive.

With the four recovery modules of this software, you can recover various kinds of files from data storage devices like internal hard drive, external hard drive, removable storage media, and so forth.

Which recovery module can be used to recover data from an external hard drive? Let’s talk about them.

• This PC module is designed to recover data from logical damaged partition, RAW partition, and formatted partition. It is the most powerful recovery module among these four recovery modules.
• Removable Disk Drive module can restore data from different kinds of removable storage media including USB flash drives, SD card, memory cards, pen drives, and more.
• Hard Disk Drive module is specially used to recover data from a missing partition which is caused by operating system crash, hard drive failure, system update, etc.
• CD/DVD Drive module can retrieve lost or deleted data from the damaged or scratched CD and DVD.

Now, you should know that This PC module can be used to recover your data from an external hard drive.

How to operate this recovery module to rescue the data on external hard drive keeps disconnecting? We make the following step-by-step guide.

Full Guide to Recover Files from an External Hard Drive via MiniTool

With MiniTool Power Data Recovery Trial Edition, you can check whether this software can find the files you want to recover. Now, you can download this edition to have a try.

If you are a personal user, you can use the Personal Deluxe edition of this software to recover your data without limitation.

After installing the software on your computer, you can start to recover data from your external hard drive. Meanwhile, please keep the external hard drive connected with your computer.

In this post, we will take MiniTool Power Data Recovery Personal Deluxe as an example.

Firstly, you need to open the software to enter This PC module interface by default. You can discover that this software will show you the storage devices it can detect.

Then, you need to click on the external hard drive you want to recover. If the drive is not displayed here, you need to click on the refresh button until it is shown on this interface.

Secondly, if you only need to recover some certain types of files from the external hard disk, you can use the Settings function of this free hard disk data recovery software to make some selections.

Please click on the Settings button and then check the file types you want to recover from the pop-out window. After that, click on OK button to close this Scan Settings window.

Thirdly, you need to press Scan button to start the scanning process.

Fourthly, when the scanning process is finished, you will see the scan result. This data recovery software can detect both existing and lost & deleted files for you. Then, you need to select the files you want to recover from the external hard disk with connection issue.

If it is easy to find the files you want to recover, you can just check them and click on Save button to save them. Of course, you should not save the selected files to its original path.

If you discover that it is difficult to find the files you want to recover, you can use these three functions of this data recovery software: Type, Show Lost Files,Find, Filter and Preview.

• After clicking Type tab, the scanned files will be displayed by type, and then you can find your files easily.
• After clicking on Show Lost Files, this software will show you the lost files only which can assist you find the lost data quickly.
• If you remember the name of the file you want to recover, you can tap Find feature on the scan result interface and then type the name into the search bar to find the file directly.
• With Filter function, you can filter the scanned files by its Name/Extension, Size, Date and more.
• After choosing a text or image file from the scan result, you can preview it to check whether it is the file you want to recover. You can only preview the file which is smaller than 20 MB.

For more information about these three useful functions, you can read the help tutorial of this file recovery software from the MiniTool official site.

When these data recovery operations are finished, you can open the specified storage path and use the recovered files directly.

Now, you save your files on the external hard drive to a safe path. Next, you need to fix this external hard drive keeps disconnecting issue.

Part 3: Fix Hard Drive Keeps Disconnecting and Reconnecting

In this part, we will focus on fixing computer randomly disconnecting and reconnecting external hard drive in Windows issue. Meanwhile, these solutions can also fix the following similar issues:

1. When you want to copy or transfer some files, the computer randomly disconnecting and reconnecting external hard drive issue occurs.
2. When you want to open an external hard drive, Windows prompts you to format the disk before you can use it, or access is denied.

Solution 1: Use a Different USB Port

When you search external hard drive keeps disconnecting issue on the internet, you can find some users say that this problem is solved by changing the USB 3.0 port to USB 2.0 port. This solution is very simple. Try it. But, you should know that the transfer speed will be slower by using USB 2.0 port.

If this external hard drive keeps disconnecting issue still appears after you connect the external hard drive to your computer via USB 2.0, you can try solution 2.

Solution 2: Turn off USB Selective Suspend Setting

It is said that this external hard drive keeps disconnecting issue can be caused by the power feature. That is to say, the computer might be set as turning off USB devices after a while to save power. If so, you can disable this setting.

Take Windows 10 as an example.

Step 1: Please right click Windows button and choose Control Panel. Then tap System and Security.

Step 2: Then, you will enter the following interface. Please find Power Options and tap it.

Step 3: Another interface will appear. Please check Power saver option and then click on Change plan settings to continue.

Step 4: You will enter the following interface. Next, please click on Change advanced power settings to go on.

Step 5: The Power Options interface will pop out. Then, you need to find USB settings. Unfold it and then change USB selective suspend setting to Disabled.

Step 6: You need to click on OK button to save the changes.

Many users say this solution solves this issue for them. Krishna flute mp3 download full song about 3 minutes. If it works for you, everything will be fine. If not, please try solution 3.

Solution 3: Prevent PC from Turning off Mass Storage Device

If the computer randomly disconnecting and reconnecting external hard drive, it is possible that the PC is set to turn off various devices automatically to save power. This may turn off the connected external hard drive sometimes.

In this situation, you can change the setting in Device Manager.

To do this, you need to open the Device Manager, and then find the target USB Root Hub. Next, just click on it and there will be a small pop-out window. Choose Power Management tab and then uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

At last, please click on OK button to save this change.

Now, you can check whether your external hard drive can be connected to your computer successfully.

If this solution doesn’t work for you, please move to solution 4.

Solution 4: Disable USB legacy support in BIOS

This solution works for the computer which has both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports.

You can solve this hard drive keeps disconnecting and reconnecting issue by disabling USB legacy support in BIOS.

Still, you need to do this job in Device Manager.

Step 1: After opening the Device Manager, you need to find the target external hard drive under Disk Driver list and double click on it to open it.

Step 2: Then, you will see the following interface. Next, please click on Policies tab and then check Better Performance. After that, you need to check Enable write caching on this device and click on OK button to save these changes.

Does this method work for you? If not, please see solution 5.

Solution 5: Install the Newest USB 3.0 Controller Drivers

If external hard drive keeps disconnecting issue still exists after you try the above four methods, you need to consider installing the newest USB 3.0 controller drivers.

The reliable way to make this update is to enter the motherboard manufacturer’s website and then download the corresponding latest chipset drivers.

Part 4: Summary

Is it successful to recover data from the external hard drive with connection issue by using MiniTool Power Data Recovery? Is the external hard drive keeps disconnecting issue solved after trying the five methods introduced mentioned in this post? Hope this article can really solve your problem.

If you have any questions when you are using MiniTool software, you can send an email to [email protected], or you can leave a message in the following comment area. Any useful solutions are appreciated here. Thank you!