T440p HDD via caddy disappears after idling

Hello everyone!

Hope some of you has experience with my issue because laptop Lenovo T440p and Win10 are not new on a market.


My setup:
Lenovo T440p,
Adata SSD in a main slot instead of original HDD with Windows 10, 1803 (64 bit) on board,
Cheap Aliexpress( https://bit.ly/2PLqNi1) caddy dedicated for Lenovo t440p for 10$ in place of DVD-ROM, CADDY has Western Digital 320GB SATA II (WD3200BPVT) Hard disk drive in it using AHCI.

The problem is my HDD disappears from devices (also drives disappears too) after certain amount of idling. This is very visible after boot. If I dont touch laptop for 10 mins after booting(no login too), my Caddy's with HDD(in place of DVD) indicator stops the indicator lights (black) and drive is not visible anymore in Device manager or Explorer etc.

Below mentioned activities performed by me with no positive effect:
- changed power plan for drives in Windows power management for disks (to Never turn off)(no result)
- updated BIOS to latest from Lenovo (no result)
- installed Intel Rapid Storage (no result)
- installed LenovoThinkvage via windows market (with no settings changed because I could not find any related to disks)
- caddy itself has no switches inside (visual check)


In addition, there is an icon like for USB to Remove safely my HDD in bottom right corner in Windows 10 - I guess this is the aftereffect of my issue. No positive effect of removing it from there:
- I tried to remove it as well via Register (as administrator) (icon is still there)

- What I have read it could be related to Windows 8, Windows 10 energy safe policy. Seems like Windows 7 has no such issues (have not tried).

- I've read, that it could be also related to DVD SATA port and its bus 5, because it was designed to be energy efficient and I cannot force to keep SATA port to be 'Always On' on this laptop without turning it off. Can someone confirm?

- Also, I don’t want to buy official Lenovo Ultraybay caddy for big dollar. There could be the same issues. If you know other 3rd party caddies which work well in Win10, for reasonable price, please let me know.

- one last thing, there is a forced solution using some software applications, to copy/create each 2-4 minutes empty file on this HDD. But I would prefer to avoid it if possible.

- Another idea that it could be related to SATA II HDD. Not sure which SATA is under DVD-ROM but could think of SATA III all around in this laptop. Is it possible to make such problems because of different SATAs ?


please advice or share your experience to make my storage more than one SSD.

 

The third party devices tend to be more flaky in my experience.

 

well yeah but I dont see any reason to buy Lennovo caddy.
I saw on ebay some other tray from Opticaddy maybe will try that one later but not sure if it will help.
Anyone use caddies here?

 

How about cause your drive doesn't disappear when let it idle for 10 minutes, no?

I had a caddy back in the day, had a battery and a BD-R too, but all my machines since 2011 have offered dual drive, so there's been no need for a caddy. If you buy another caddy, it'll probably work. It was most likely just bad luck with this one.

 

I think I have found a solution since the last my reply (10 days)I had no disconnection.

So I set in Windows 10 power management plan all to max performance and also set sleeping times of USB, PCI-E and other stuff that it is there to NEVER (or so).

 

@Dead0k I'd check Optical Drive power settings in BIOS.

 

well in BIOS it is set to HIGH PERFOMANCE.
Probably it is some SATA2 miscomunication or Windows 10 'features'.