Currently, I am using Acer Revo Mini M1-601, which is a great machine by itself. The really small size is bonus and I do all my daily tasks with it. Lately, I had to install Windows 10 and I encountered a strange bug, which I later also found when using a bleeding edge Linux distributions like Debian Sid, and here is what happened.

I have a clone dock/drive bay combo, which allows me to mount an external hard drive to my computer via usb2/3 connection. Now, my new computer comes mainly with usb3 and that is great. The problems begin when I am mounting my hard drive via clone dock/drive bay combo. What actually happens is that everything works smoothly about 5 to 6 minutes and then systems(like Windows 8 / 10 and Debian Sid or even OS X) unmount the external hard drive by themselves and kick it out. In the previous case, the only choice is to manually remount the device – but after a while this gets quite annoying to do every 5 to 6 minutes.

As I did some testing to remedy this issue, I came across the following solution. If I connect an usb hub to the usb3 port and then connect my clone dock/drive bay combo to the usb3 port everything starts working just fine – both in Windows and Linux side. What is the issue in the first place? The solution itself hints towards the case that usb3 port might be giving just a bit too much power to the clone dock/drive bay combo, which in turn leads to an automated unmounting procedure. In other words: the system is automatically unmounting the usb device in question because it sees it using too much power.Of course, unmounting is a generally a good thing but in this case it is an annoyance. So, to remedy this issue for now, just grab an inexpensive usb hub and hook it in and you should be all set. The beauty of the usb hub is that it is actually dividing the power input of one usb port to multiple power outputs when it gives us all those extra usb ports – and in this scenario it is just what we need.