USB drives drop out when two used at once

I believe the following may be a problem with my PC, not necessarily a bug with Opus. I am hoping for guidance.

This is a new problem. I have a Win10 system version 21H2 and using the Opus 12.27 64bit. What I am experiencing is that when I have either an NTFS or FAT USB plugged in, intermittently the drive and/or folders I have selected will disappear from OPUS. See attached image. In this example I had an NTFS and a FAT USB plugged in, Drives E and F respectively, and after about 15 min., Drive F disappeared. To get it back I usually just click on the drive image in the drive bar; occasionally I have to unplug and replug the drive.

If I have multiple folders within the drive open and selected sometimes they go away but the drive remains. Since it occurs with 2 different NTFS drives and 1 FAT drive that I have tried I do not think it is the drives. I have run sfc /scannow and DISM /Online and neither discovered problems.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to trouble shoot or is there more info I can provide? Thank you.
Opus USB issue

Delete, missread

You’ll see the same outside of Opus, whichever program(s) you use to look at the drives. The devices will be dropping in and out at the OS/hardware levels and not only in one program.

USB drives can require more power than you might think these days (although it’s not surprising if you consider how hot they get under sustained use, and heat = power usage).

As Sasa says, make sure they’re getting enough power. Unpowered hubs can usually handle one USB stick but may struggle with two or with things that need more power (very fast USB sticks, HDDs, etc.).

Bandwidth is also an issue. If I plug USB sticks into the same powered hub as my (high report rate) mouse, I can see the mouse become very slow to respond while copying between the sticks at full speed.

I also thought it is USB power, but wondered and deleted my post as I read "have to press drive image again"... my experience is that the device button always disappears on disconnect on less power and you always have to replug it.

I've seen drives come and go due to low power, but other possibilities are something is wrongly broadcasting drive/media-eject events for some reason.

Sorry for the late reply. I want to do more homework, however, underpowering is not likely the issue. As Sasa noted, the drive is still listed, I just have to click it again to get it to open in the panes. Also the USBs I'm using are integral to a 15" custom laptop with a huge power brick (19.5volts/16.9amp) that is plugged in. I am wondering if it is a win10 issue. Any trouble shooting suggestions appreciated. As I said, I already ran sfc /scannow and DISM /Online and neither discovered problems.

I just bought a SATA-to-USB cable for SSDs, to replace an old one, and have found it constantly drops the device, then it comes back, over and over. Sometimes it works for a while but it often appears and disappears every few seconds. That is when Windows isn't saying the device malfunctioned and won't list the drive at all. (This happens in Explorer as well as Opus, FWIW.)

I think, on top of the other possibilities, some USB devices are just broken. Or, at least, I've not had issues with any others (including my older, similar cable), whether USB 2 or USB 3, on the same machine, USB ports and drivers.

This is my experience as well. I think some usb hubs are poorly manufactured/designed. It is difficult to determine which brands are good. It seems that one factory makes several brands that appear on Amazon or ebay. They don't seem to support two usb powered devices (usb drives).

I appreciate what you all are saying but these are builty in USBs in a high-end custom laptop that I've had for 3-1/2 yrs and only recently has the problem started occurring. I have tested it with 2 32gig NTFS USB sticks and one smaller FAT USB. I've just had some windows updates and will try again, but to my mind something on my PC has changed.

Please note my experience is that letter also disappears, but I am with Leo and that it must be a power issue - I just never saw it that way, but also can't imagine any other reason.

High quality laptop doesn't tell anything about USB or AC power. I have installed hundreds "highend"-Lenovos, FS's, Surfaces,..., and e.g. lots of them offer only one USB, that allows booting and more power than the other ports (kind of "master" USB). So often my iODD Mini/Zalman VE400 (= ext. admin bootdevices) get enough power only in one specific port.

Try hub with own power, if problem is solved, power IS the problem. You also put less strain on the Laptop's ports on daily usage.

By the way, the size or type of a USB-device says nothing about its power consumption. Two same large sticks from diff. manufactors must not have same consumption, depending on their built-in controllers/components. And also AC Adapter loses efficiency over years.

Just wanted to let you know I solved the problem. The issue appears to be due to the USB stick. I thought another one had also been messing up but last week I tried two identical DTEG2 32GB sticks, a fast and highly rated model. One did fine, the other kept dropping. Previously I had checked it for errors, and repaired it but that didn't solve the problem. So last week I removed all my files from it and did a reformat, not the quick reformat, but the full slow version. Now it seems to be working fine. Curiously even when it was bad, it worked on my SurfaceG0 v2, but not on my main machine. Now after 2 days of testing (fingers crossed) it seems to be working fine. So just letting you know that another cause of the problems we were discussing can be a glitch on the stick itself, that doesn't get fixed with anything short of reformatting.

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Still cant imagine, that formatting is the reason. What should be the technical explanation, that full format avoids disconnects? The only reasons could be the driver, but then its a driver, not formatting issue. Or because of full format device gots temperature which fixed bad contact points...

Ever seen the advice "Please full format to get device 100% working" on packaging?! But if its working for you now you still can believe in it as solution ;-)....

Ok, so you got me worried. Yes it did seem odd which is why I hadn't tried that solution earlier. So I gave it one more test. I plugged it in this morning, with all the old files copied back to it (that had been dropping) and let it stay connected for 8 hours and it never dropped. I will advise of future developments.

USB is still "magic"!

These days I wanted to copy a ~100 GB zip from my USB-M.2 to internal M.2... suddenly USB-device disconnected (happened never before). Pressing retry in DO worked, but every 10-15 GB short disconnects appeared (retry always worked). So tried another USB-cable and now file was copied in one go. But: First used cable was brand-new, so I tried again using it, but now in another front port and... copying worked, no disconnects!!!

USB is "magic"!

Recently I bought 2 Class-10 SD-cards for use in my good old Amiga 3000. While copying HD-image via PC was up to 40-60 MB/s on first card, the second never reached more than 6-7 MB/s.

USB is "magic"!

I'm not sure if this is topical at all, but I thought perhaps it may be of help.
I have experienced USB dropout to an external DVD recorder several times.

I have an external and external powered LG DVD recorder plugged in to a powered USB 3 port on my laptop. I run the laptop plugged into an AC power supply when I use the DVD recorder.
What happens is that the data transfer to write is killed at a random point in the disk burn.
The program Image Burn keeps trying to write , but can't.
I know from stupid experience that to get a good burn, I need to stop all other activity on the computer.
No web browsing no matter how trivial ! Let the computer be and I get a good DVD.

Once the DVD writer drops out, I know nothing of how to get it back. I have just burned a garbage disk.