The Google tells me I'm not the only one with this issue but I haven't seen anything that looks like a solution. I have a very stock setup, 8GB RAM, 750GB WD Black HDD, HDMI monitor, KBD/Mouse connected via KVM all running under Windows 7 Home Premium. I have a USB 3.0 hard drive cradle, external powered with 2 bays. If I put a drive in one of the bays and try to run a CHKDSK or create an image backup, the process fails due to the drive disconnecting. Most of the time the drive immediately reconnects but the damage is done at this point. When it occurs, Windows sends the pop-up window announcing that a new drive has been detected. FWIW, Windows then considers the drive dirty so a CHKDSK needs to be run resulting in an endless cycle eventually leading to madness.
This seems to happen only under heavy load. If I simply leave the drive in the cradle and even if I peruse it, there is no disconnection. It's not the drive itself, have tested several both 3.5 and 2.5. It's not the cradle, I've been using it for quite a while on different machines and only just put it on the NUC. It would not appear to be old or missing drivers as I just updated them from the Intel site today. I believe I am on the current BIOS version, updated last week. There are no messages in the Event Log that indicate a problem.
The feel here is that either the driver or the USB hardware simply can not tolerate a sustained high data rate. Has anyone ever solved this problem?