External storage keeps disconnecting

[latuman]

Hiya. Here's the problem.

 

Intenso 3TB drive; https://www.nierle.com/s01.php?shopid=s01&cur=eur&sp=en&ag=1&pp=aa&bnr=12752

 

It was for the longest time connected to my TP-Link TD-W8980 via USB, which to my surprise worked out of the box as a network drive. Very cool feature for the router. Anyways the drive filled up, because my free version of backup software didn't delete old files. So after realizing how slowly it would delete files off the drive, I disconnected the drive, attached it to my PC and formatted it as NTFS, which it was already when it was connected (NTFS support is mentioned in 192.168.1.1). So then I connect the drive back to the router and it seems to work like before. Until overnight.

 

Morning, it had disconnected. The led in front of the drive blinked steadily and 192.168.1.1, which normally shows the drive itself and all the partitions it has detected, now displays only that the drive is Intenso 3TB, but NO VOLUMES PRESENT. Using 192.168.1.1 to reconnect the drive did not fix it. Powering off and on the drive did however, only to disconnect again the next day. I don't know how long it actually stays online, but at least maybe 5 to 12 hours, not sure if it's an exact time it disconnects yet.

 

So I remove the drive again and format it again as NTFS, clicking also the button that says something like "use device defaults" for the cluster size, etc. Didn't help, still disconnects. OK, then I remove the drive and attach it to my PC overnight. Do the backup again and the next morning, it disconnects. This time when it's connected to my PC, so I suspect it's not the device it's connected to, but the drive itself, OR something wrong with the formatting.

 

The router has USB 2.0 port, PC has 3.0 ports, results are the same. Keep in mind, the simple software on the router behaves exactly the same; the drive just disconnects after many hours. I always notice the problem the next day.

 

Piriform Speccy does not display any SMART info, and I'm not sure it should; are there drives that don't have SMART compatibility or does the USB connection break it somehow? So I cannot see the data that might be out of whack, especially the temperature. But regarding the temperature, while it was backing up, it did it through a 5GHz network, which only tops 7MB/s maybe, so I would feel overheating would be very unlikely. Also, the disconnecting happened on my PC sometime after the backup was already done, so the drive wasn't being used.

 

To recap: Problem started after I reformatted the drive on my PC and connected it back to the router. What the heck? I am sure that I did not whack the drive, it has not taken any hits whatsoever and the disconnecting so far seems to take many, MANY hours. If it was truly random it would do it if I shook the drive or something, but it doesn't.

 

I have disabled USB power saving in power options for now and I'm trying that, though what's the point, if it happens on the simple router aswell?

 

Maybe next step is to try formatting it to FAT32, but... I'm running out of options, so in other words:

 

What should I still try before I RMA the drive?