Annoying External Hard Drive issue.

foxstar

Hi guys.  I haven't used Daz studio for a while since my old computer was too slow.  I recently got a new computer and am reaquainting myself with the software but have encountered a very annoying problem.

I have six external usb hard drives, and when I run DAZ studio, all of them will start simultaneously disconnecting and reconnecting to the computer over and over again at frequent random intervals.  I doubt this is healthy for the hard drives and having half a dozen instances of file explorer constantly popping up over the application interface and needing to be closed is annoying to the point of rendering the application practically unusable.  I haven't directed the program to look for any content on those drives, it really shouldn't even be aware that they exist.

Any ideas what may be causing this?  Is it a USB issue?  Short of physically disconnecting my external drives whenever I use DAZ, is there anything I can do to keep it from messing around with them? 

Richard Haseltine

I have only oen drive attached, but haven't noticed any issues. I would wonder, if this happens only when rendering, if it's a matter of power - if the rendering is causing the system to draw enough power that the USB drops below a threshold, especially if the drives are bus-powered.

foxstar

Hi Richard.  I considered the same possibility but at first I thought it was wrong. 

Although my card does draw a lot of power (I managed to score a 3090, WOOO!!!!) and I first noticed the issue when rendering, I made sure my system had a beefy 1350W power supply, my USB hub is externally powered, and the issue persisted even when I wasn't rendering. 

Then I realized I had had the Iray preview renderer on, and the issue cleared up as soon as I switched it off, so I'm guessing that at least has something to do with it after all.  It is odd though considering my hub is powered and my system has plenty of juice.  Also, the drives don't get knocked out when the card is under heavy load while playing games.

I think I'll get a seperate hub just for the hard drives and just unplug it when I'm using Iray unless you can suggest something else I can try.  It's still annoying, but at least I have a vague idea where the problem is and can work around it. Fortunately I splurged on a big enough internal drive for my content, it would *really* suck if I had to use external runtimes like I did on my previous system.

Many thanks for your help!

Richard Haseltine

I'm sorry, I don't have any concrete advice - my suggestion was just based on thinking about what might be going on rather than on anything approaching certainty.

vectorinus

However, hard drives are very powerful devices. You can try disconnecting some of it and see if the problem goes away. If yes, then you can connect the HDD one by one.