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I have 1TB Seagate Portable External Hard Drive STAX1000102. I am using it with laptops, Windows XP and Windows 7, and I am observing that after certain time of being idle, and accessing the drive again, it freezes for cca 4 seconds before it can read from it again. Can you tell what is happening?

But the most annoying problem happens on Windows 7 (not on Windows XP) - message pops up, saying:

The disk in drive E is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?

This is not happening when I insert the drive, as in the case of damaged partitions, TrueCrypt devices etc. It just happens in the middle of the drive being connected (but somehow disconnected by Windows maybe), maybe after I open the laptop after it has been closed in the middle of the work.

  1. What is the cause of the problem? As I said, the partitions are OK, it doesn't appear when I connect the drive. I prefer to look at the cause first.

  2. If the cause cannot be "healed", what are other options/workarounds? Those offered for TrueCrypt doesn't seem to be related to my case. And the tool for canceling the dialog is a dirty solution...

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Tomas
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    You should clarify if your hdd is encrypted by Truecrypt or not. If its not encrypted then don't even mention Truecrypt. – Ramhound Jun 24 '13 at 18:15
  • @Ramhound it is NOT encrypted. I mentioned it because I searched superuser and TrueCrypt devices have exactly the same issue (upon insertion however). – Tomas Jun 24 '13 at 19:01
  • We use similar external drive units , hop them between Xp and 7 and rarely see such a problem. the "not-formatted" comes up more often in net/forums when the drive has been formatted slightly weird by some other system or softwares. What you are indicating here though is it goes to sleep and wakes up confused :-) If you had a DAY or two, you could move the data to a cleanly and carefully and simply (basic) formatted drive, clear it off completly and reformat it cleanly and see if it tosses that error as often. In a web search are others using the Same enclosure having any similar problems? – Psycogeek Jun 24 '13 at 20:25

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I am using it with laptops, Windows XP and Windows 7, and I am observing that after certain time of being idle, and accessing the drive again, it freezes for cca 4 seconds before it can read from it again. Can you tell what is happening?

The internal drive likely a "Green" drive which means it enters a low powered state after a certain amount of time.

What is the cause of the problem? As I said, the partitions are OK, it doesn't appear when I connect the drive. I prefer to look at the cause first.

Windows believes the drive does not have a file system. You don't indicate the file system, so its tough, to guess what the problemn is.

Ramhound
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  • Ramhound, thanks. 1) What do you mean by *'The internal drive likely a "Green" drive ...'* - I use external drive, not internal. 2) Filesystem is NTFS. But why does Windows stop to believe that the drive has a filesystem, when it did believe when I had inserted the drive!! – Tomas Jun 24 '13 at 19:05
  • @Tomas - The drive inside the external enclouser. Look up what "green" drivers are exactly. – Ramhound Jun 24 '13 at 19:39
  • Any of them (even non-green) can go to sleep and take a few seconds (up to 20seconds max) to wake back up and start working, 4 seconds is nothing :-) – Psycogeek Jun 24 '13 at 20:21
  • @Ramhound OK but why do you use word "internal" when you speak about external drive? – Tomas Jun 24 '13 at 20:25
  • @Psycogeek thanks, but why does Windows not understand that and makes trouble? – Tomas Jun 24 '13 at 20:26
  • MOST of these drives (the drive itself) can have the internal (firmware) switch changed so it takes longer to sleep. Even when told that certian drives would not allow this change, through perseverance and putting the drive Internal on a sata buss (temporarily) I have changed the behaviour of 2types (12 drives total), must find the exact low-level software, must be internally connected, must set it all exact, then hope. There is also cheap trick No sleep software that simply writes a teeny file to the drive every few minutes that will keep it awake. rude simple but effective. – Psycogeek Jun 24 '13 at 20:35
  • @Psycogeek, I was not asking about how to turn of the "green behaviour", I don't think this is desired... I was only asking how to tell Windows to not panic when the drive is not ready immediatelly. They also seem to unmount the drive sometimes when it is connected and sleeps. – Tomas Jun 24 '13 at 20:59
  • if the drive became completly unmounted, what would the "safe Remove" thing in the notifications indicate? Does it happen more often in one of the systems vrses the other? – Psycogeek Jun 24 '13 at 21:06
  • @Tomas - I was speaking of the drive INSIDE the external enclouser itself. I didn't say an `3.5" internal drive`. Besides making sure you buy external USB HDDs that do not use this energy saving green drives I don't know a good way to solve your problem. – Ramhound Jun 25 '13 at 11:05