VN7-592G usb charging port issue with external drives

petitbreton · October 2016

Hi,

I bought at the beginning of the year an ACER VN7-592G under Windows 10.

I'm very happy with my purchase and the laptop is working perfectly except for a "little" annoyance :

when I connect an external drive to the usb charging port (the one on the right side near the RJ45 port), I cannot eject it. The drive is recognized and working perfectly. The problem is that it's considered as an internal drive, not an external one and that's the reason I do not have the eject option.

Generally, I use that port for my external optical drive or for an MTP device but if I could access all my ports completely it would be perfect. I have different external drives and the problem is the same for all.

I looked at the bios options but could not find anything relevant. Does anyone have any idea on how to solve this ?

Thanks a lot,

Vincent

PMiner · October 2016

try installing the driver from here. If that doesn't work, maybe try getting a USB hub, and pluggining that in.

RadeonHD · October 2016

If the drive you are connecting is a portable HDD, than it is normal to be considered an internal drive and you won't have the eject option in Windows. It happens to me too with my WD Elements 1TB portable hdd whenever I connect it to any pc.

If you are connecting a regular usb stick and you can't eject it....than it is strange indeed...

petitbreton · October 2016

Yes, it's a portable HDD. I can eject usb sticks without problem. Why is it normal that the drive is considered as internal ? (maybe it's a dumb question...) With the other port (the non charging one), I can eject my HDD easily as always with any other pc I connected it to.

sharky25k · October 2016

RadeonHD wrote:
If the drive you are connecting is a portable HDD, than it is normal to be considered an internal drive and you won't have the eject option in Windows. It happens to me too with my WD Elements 1TB portable hdd whenever I connect it to any pc.
If you are connecting a regular usb stick and you can't eject it....than it is strange indeed...

Hi,

Maybe it's normal for your notebook I mean the 592G but it's not normal in general. An external HDD should be ejected before disconnecting to avoid data loss or crash of any software which is currently using the drive. It's like you would have an internal drive and suddenly without turning off the PC you would disconnect it. It's not very good approach.

Here is my external HDD connected to the 591G and you can see that I have the option to eject the HDD.

Actually, I am not sure if it's not a windows thing, since you are not the only one reporting this issue. http://superuser.com/questions/956041/cant-eject-external-usb-hard-drive-in-windows-10

petitbreton · October 2016

Here's what I have when I connect the drive to the non-charging port :

As you can see, the drive appears on the left side as well as on the right side. But if I connect the drive to the charging port, it disappears on the left side (well it does not disappear but it's under This PC and not below as above) :

PMiner · October 2016

The charging port is most likely directly connected to the motherboard since it is used for charging, and does not go through a controller like other ports do.

sharky25k · October 2016

PMiner wrote:
The charging port is most likely directly connected to the motherboard since it is used for charging, and does not go through a controller like other ports do.

No, it's not the port which provides power for the notebook, it's a USB charging port for electronic devices like phones and so on. And of course, in order to recognize any USB device, you need a controller. The special thing about this port is that it can provide power even if the notebook is off. I think the issue is how it's viewed by windows itself. I think it's viewed as an "internal" port just to be able to provide power even in the off state.