Weird thing happened today

So today I was playing Directive 8020 on my PC. It is a very demanding game. At 4k with Path tracing at max settings with DLSS balanced and frame generation it gets about 60 fps in the ship with a 4090/13900k/64 GB RAM.

What happened is at the same time I was playing the game well I run a windows backup every Friday at 3 pm to an External Seagate USB 3.0 4TB HDD and it was about 3:30 and I got that sound that a USB device had disconnected while I was playing and then a notification that the backup had failed. This has never happened before ever. The HDD was completely gone from the computer. In looking in event viewer it was an Event ID 129 which is when the computer issues a reset to the device because it failed to respond or something.

For reference I have two internal Sata SSDs/three NVME SSds. A usb c western digital p 50 1TB NVME game drive and the 4TB usb 3.0 external seagate HDD. And Xbox wireless adapter for windows in a usb port for a controller. Keyboard and mouse too.

I had to unplug the HDD and replug it in to get recognized again. All drive scans come back 100% health. And the computer works like nothing happened. So I’m not sure what happened do you think everything was overloaded with how demanding the game was and how much is plugged in maybe? I’m just trying to find and make sense of what could have happened. I probably won’t run backup when playing games again.

@spartanz1080

Event ID 129 in Windows 11 indicates that a storage device (like an SSD or HDD) failed to respond within the timeout period, forcing Windows to issue a hardware or driver reset. It is frequently accompanied by brief system freezes, high disk usage, or boot issues.

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Quick Diagnostic Checklist

• Symptoms: Momentary system freezes, 100% disk usage, or temporary unresponsiveness.
• Common Sources: stornvme (NVMe drives), iaStorVD (Intel VMD/RAID controllers), or storahci.
• Check Drive Health: Download a utility like CrystalDiskInfo to rule out a failing drive.

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Step-by-Step Fixes

1. Update Storage Controllers and Firmware
Outdated drivers or firmware often fail to communicate properly with Windows 11 power management.

• Firmware: Visit your manufacturer's support site (e.g., Samsung Magician, Kingston SSD Manager, or Crucial Storage Executive) to update your SSD firmware.
• Drivers: Go to Device Manager > Storage controllers, right-click your controller (e.g., Standard NVM Express Controller), and select Update driver.

2. Modify Power Options
Windows 11 aggressive power-saving states can prematurely put storage devices to sleep, triggering the timeout.

• Open the Run dialog (Win + R), type control, and open Power Options.
• Click Change plan settings for your active power plan, then select Change advanced power settings.
• Expand Hard disk > Turn off hard disk after and set the minutes to 0 (Never).
• Expand PCI Express > Link State Power Management and set it to Off.

3. Update Motherboard Chipset Drivers and BIOS
If you use RAID/VMD mode, an outdated BIOS may cause conflicts with Windows 11.

• Go to your motherboard manufacturer’s support website (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI) and download the latest BIOS and Chipset drivers.
• If using a RAID setup, you can try disabling RAID/VMD in the BIOS and switching to standard AHCI mode to see if the timeouts cease.

4. Run System File Checker

• Open Start, search for cmd.
• Right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
• Type sfc /scannow and press Enter.
• Once finished, type DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth and press Enter.

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Click to expand...

And here's ten points, just for filling out your computer specs.

spartanz1080 said:

I had to unplug the HDD and replug it in to get recognized again. All drive scans come back 100% health. And the computer works like nothing happened. So I’m not sure what happened do you think everything was overloaded with how demanding the game was and how much is plugged in maybe? I’m just trying to find and make sense of what could have happened

Click to expand...

Event ID 129 means the OS issued a reset to the storage device because it stopped responding. You do have a lot going on there, While it could have just been a blip with the drive or a blip in other hardware, there are a number of other reasons it could have happened.

You are right about the gaming. It's not wrong exactly, but doing a backup while gaming increases the chance of power related blips. The first thing I would suspect is a power fault. You don't say how you connect those external devices. Was the drive plugged into a usb hub? Is the drive externally powered.? HDDs use a lot of power and should be externally powered and plugged directly into one of the rear usb ports. If you use an external usb hub for multiple devices (except Keyboard and mouse) you should use a powered usb hub to maintain stable power. Port power only when using a hub can't handle multiple power-demanding devices.
OTHER POSSIBILITIES:
flakey cable
the drive could have overheated. Run a backup and check drive temps.
a bad cable
the drive is flaky. Just not 100% failing

I would start from rigorous check of external HDD on another machine. Not only by usual chkdsk, but also check the current status of surface, damaged sectors etc, for example, by DiskInfo. It would be also a good idea to check how can it work continuously to exclude possible problem with degraded quality because of internal overheating. You can also perform some read/write tests using DiskInfo.

Another possible problem (because it happened when you played a resource-demanding video game) is the power spike. It might happen if your PSU is near the limit of capacity when CPU and GPU are working at maximum performance. Such spikes may be very short, but detrimental for whole system including external USB devices. I'd suggest to exclude such simultaneous tasks.

I run a windows backup

Click to expand...

- could you clarify what sort of backup you're referring to please?

All drive scans come back 100% health.

Click to expand...

- could you clarify what sort of scan you mean?

E.g.
- Surface scan
- chkdsk (Note- chkdsk is NOT an entire disk check)
- A scan with a 3rd party tool...

DiskInfo

Click to expand...

in Slavic's post refers to
Crystal Diskinfo (free) portable version available
- simply launch and look to see disk status based on SMART params.