Dual dock disappearing from PC

I have 2 Dual hard drive docks both by Wavlink. A ST342U and a ST341U. The ST342U I have had no problems with but just got the 341 which is reported by Windows as a J Micron SCSI adapter. The 342 is just reported as USB mass storage device in device manager.

The 341 keeps disappearing from file explorer and I am planning on returning it when reading large files with teracopy.

Anyone know if the J Micron controller is problematic as I have found another Wavlink similar to the 342 which I will test.

There are unconfirmed reports that some J Micron USB chips have issues with SOME USB controllers, and every motherboard may have a different USB controller. The raspberry Pi forum suggests using AS Media based hardware if you have issues with J Micron.
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=332353

In your Windows system go to Device Manager, open your "USB mass storage device" and double click, on the details tab choose "Hardware IDs"

You should see USB\VID_xxxx&PID=_yyyyy

What replaces the xxxx in the VID area is the "Vendor ID" and you should be able to search that on the web and work out the manufacturer. (PID is Product ID).

Intel is usually 8086 as the vendor ID

Thanks for that I will investigate but Linux lsusb says both docks are J Micron one says SCSI Bridge the other just says External. The SCSI bridge is the problem one which is being returned for an ST334UA.

Well have received the ST334 from seller and according the Linux it has AS Media chip 6gb bridge. So testing now, been attached for 4 hours verifying files so seems ok.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

There are unconfirmed reports that some J Micron USB chips have issues with SOME USB controllers, and every motherboard may have a different USB controller. The raspberry Pi forum suggests using AS Media based hardware if you have issues with J Micron.
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=332353

have seen a 66gb tar file fail downloading to a ssd powered by an jmicron usb to sata controller.

It's happened again in Windows. Got rid of the JMicron USB dock by way of leaking roof and replaced with another AS Media dock. New Toshiba NAS drives and in the middle of copying files Teracopy says no destination.

Repeated the copy in Linux and it completed, now verifying copies has to be a Windows bug?

May have a clue what's going on with windows. In the event log windows is trying and failing to page memory to the external USB HDD while the copy is running. This shouldn't be happening so have disabled "Let windows manage paging on all disks" in Advanced Performance settings and ensured all drives are set to 'none' except C:. Have sent feedback with my findings via the feedback hub. See if this cures it.

do a mem86 test (sorry brain is not functioning)

edit

do a chkdsk on the usb drive

Edited by Taras (Sun 17-May-26 09:14:23)

First thing I did when it happened.

try a chkdsk on the usb drive.

is it a spinner or chips ?

One of my drives disappears from time to time thanks to Intel Rapid Storage. It happens if I haven't used the drive for a while. It reappears after one or two reboots and remains as long as I read or write to it at least once every day or two.

In reply to a post by Taras:

try a chkdsk on the usb drive.

is it a spinner or chips ?

Have a batch file with chkdsk /f on all drives before I run a backup. Its a brand new Toshiba N300 spinner 4tb. What I dont understand is why is Windows trying to page to the USB with 32GB ram while writing a big 900GB file. In the end I used robocopy to copy the file and verify with hashtools.

It will copy 2 x 900GB files to similar Tosh drives using teracopy but on the third file will fail with code 1 cant write to destination. But if its paging to the drive then I am not surprised.

Edited by Banger (Sun 17-May-26 12:13:31)

In reply to a post by Banger:

What I dont understand is why is Windows trying to page to the USB with 32GB ram while writing a big 900GB file.

If Windows doesn't think the drive is removable, it might put a pagefile.sys on the drive. You can control that in:

* Settings-> System -> About -> Advanced System Settings.

This gives the old Windows system dialog, and you can select the advanced tab, in the performace group (top) click Settings button. Advanced tab, and you can choose the Virtual Memory settings. By default it is set to automatic.

Windows pagefile isn't these days what it was in XP.

Done that. It's not hardware as it doesn't happen in Linux. But Macrium Reflect and Hasleo Backup are Windows only.

Edited by Banger (Sun 17-May-26 16:40:45)

Do you have any third party security software on your Windows?

No Defender.

Done it again this week after May update. Teracopy hashes dont match and one disk partition table has been wiped!

In reply to a post by Banger:

Done it again this week after May update. Teracopy hashes dont match and one disk partition table has been wiped!

Partition table being wiped is rather serious. I'm actually wondering if your motherboard's USB ports might have problems. If you have a motherboard updating tool see if there are any updated drivers for the chipset.

My ASUS board, (Intel 12th Gen i7 CPU) has driver updates occasionally, and its an Intel chipset with two USB 2.0 ports, and three USB 3.0 ports with A connector (max 5 gigabit) and one USB-C 3.1 port (max 10 gigabit).

In the Pentium 3 and AMD Athlon days there were all sorts of issues with USB on these boards when Win98SE and WinME were common. I remember replacing a motherboard using a VIA chipset as I could not get any USB storage or USB web cam to work.

Nothing for the chipset still at 2021 on Control Centre for Gigabyte. I now dont trust Windows so am copying files back from another drive in Linux. Unfortunately I have just discovered there is a backup partition table on GPT disks which it is and can be restored with Gparted. Wish I had known this before I had started writing files to the disk and overwriting old content.

Edited by Banger (Sun 24-May-26 17:48:54)

Gigabyte are really bad at driver updates.. Assuming its a cpu linked usb hub, go to either intel or amd's driver pages and grab the latest drivers and see if that helps.

Also another tip, say if the driver needed is realtek driver, go to the latest mobo that has that same chip so that you get the latest driver.

That works quite will with the realtek 1220 sound chips

No chipset drivers for my board on the Intel site just server. Have downloaded the Driver support Assistant and will give that a go when I am booted into Windows.

Well no problems in Linux and comparing files seems to work ok. Windows is getting worse. It's since the May update.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Well no problems in Linux and comparing files seems to work ok. Windows is getting worse. It's since the May update.

This will be down to the motherboard chipset drivers. What chipset does your motherboard use?

Linux updates this stuff automatically, Microsoft doesn't automatically update, so you need to get the updates from your motherboard manufacturer.

You may have an Intel CPU but you could have a third party (NVidia, AMD etc) chipset. The chipset controlls all the Input Output including USB.

Its an Intel H310M. It was working fine last week before the May Patch Tuesday. I have downloaded the Driver Assistant from Intel says everything up to date. I have installed the latest INF files so will test next week. All the Teracopy Verify hashes are failing in Windows but not Linux.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Its an Intel H310M. It was working fine last week before the May Patch Tuesday. I have downloaded the Driver Assistant from Intel says everything up to date. I have installed the latest INF files so will test next week. All the Teracopy Verify hashes are failing in Windows but not Linux.

Something sounds up then... if you've ever had any third party security software (e.g. Norton demo) then look for a full uninstaller from the company. You could just be unlucky with the combination.

An external powered hub, as in some monitors, might also help.

Yes the Dock is connected to a TP-Link powered hub. Been doing backups for ages and copying them to adjoining disks but all of a sudden stopped working with various error codes. No Norton or anything like that has been installed.

Disappearing USB devices is not that common, but I think you've worked through the normal options, and you've ruled out hardware (cables, connectors) by booting into Linux. I don't have any other ideas. I don't generally keep USB devices connected long term like this; I use network connections for external drives.

Interesting note from the latest Windows Cumulative Preview Update.

The USB3 stack is updated to have additional resiliency and recovery measures in place against certain unexpected hardware faults and conditions. Users will experience higher reliability with USB devices.

This is in the gradual rollout so no idea when it will hit but I wonder if it will solve my problem with USB3 file copying.

Find out next week.

Fingers crossed!

Then its windows or drivers.

You could try a windows "on the go" install to a usb drive

Further reading says it will be a permanent roll out on the June security patch Tuesday.

Well everything was working and was mirroring disks like nobody's business then in teracopy "Code 1" invalid write function. Will test again after June 9.

Have left feedback on the MS hub and it says "We've got it" so hopefully a fix in the works.