The most common reason is physical wear and tear on the drive, like bad sectors or failing parts inside the hard drive. Other possible causes include broken USB cables, unstable power supply, or problems with the drive’s controller inside its case. Here are a few reliable fixes you can try to solve this problem:
1. Update or Install the IRST Driver
If you are using an outdated Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) driver, you might experience freezing every time an external drive wakes up from a ‘soft hang.’ This is a well-known issue that affects all IRST driver versions from 15 to 18. Intel has resolved this in version 19 and later. To fix this, update your IRST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) driver from Intel’s official website. Note: You can use this method even if your system currently uses a generic storage driver. Installing the latest IRST driver will replace the generic one with Intel’s version.
2. Remove Malfunctioning USB Port Drivers
It is not unusual for Windows to freeze when a USB device is plugged in. This often happens if the USB drive or the USB port driver is corrupted. Problems like this can occur after improperly removing a USB drive or due to a bad port driver. Important: This method is only for drives plugged in via USB. If your external drive is connected with a SATA cable, skip ahead to the next section. Unless there is a hardware problem, you can usually fix USB driver corruption by reinstalling the driver. Before updating the drivers, you need to check if there are any malfunctioning USB drives still active, but hidden, on your Windows device. Note: These malfunctioning USB drives might not show up in Device Manager by default. To view them, you need to adjust some Environment Variables.
3. Update the USB Controller Drivers
If you have already checked and removed any corrupted USB drivers, the next thing you should do is test for possible problems with the USB ports themselves. Start by plugging your external hard drive into a different USB port to see if the freezing still happens. Note: Don’t use a USB hub for testing. All devices on a hub share the same drivers, which might still be causing the issue. If the problem happens on every port, try uninstalling all USB controller drivers. Windows will automatically reinstall working drivers the next time your computer restarts.
