Why a SATA HDD won't wake up from Win 8.1 Sleep?

Question

I've a Win 8.1 PC with an older ASUS Mobo with Intel P45 chipset and several internal Seagate and other makes SATA HDDs. One is Samsung green model, its controller puts the disk to sleep every 10min without Windows actions, so I disabled Turn Off Hard Disk
after X min" setting in Windows Power Options, otherwise it shows problems. But still once the disk turns off, Windows pops-up a message like
"One of your drives is showing problems...".
Also after PC wakeup from Sleep, that particular drive disappears from Windows Explorer. Trying to rescan disks locks Win Device and Disk Managers. Even if the disk shows up after PC wakeup in Explorer, opening it locks Explorer, and its impossible to Eject
either. So I have to reboot to access the disk again, or Eject it before Sleep, and Rescan after wakeup. In Win7 the same disk works perfect for years.
I looked at installing original Intel Rapid Storage driver suitable for my Mobo controller and used on Win7, instead of default Win8 SATA driver. But there are web publications saying that reverting from iaStoreV.sys to older type iaStore.sys SATA drivers
may cause Win 8.1 system become non-operational, while newer Intel RST drivers are not optimized or unsuitable for older motherboards. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Further research shows that such errors are likely linked to Event ID 129 storahci  "Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued."  It looks like the default Microsoft SATA driver is having a hard time accessing the
hard drive and logs this error endlessly every minute. Such error was earlier linked in multiple reports in particular to
Windows Power Options setting:
PCI Express - Link State Power Management
Setting it to Off is supposed to provide constant link power to PCIe connectors to SATA drives during PC operation, and likely during Sleep mode. It shoudn't prevent drives from going to Sleep by Windows or drive controller command, while
allows for older & green drive chipsets to maintain active power link with PC, including during time the drive or PC is in Sleep mode. Hopefully, it'll alleviate the issue described above.
Relevant:
On a side note, since SATA drives are hot swappable, its wise to always use
Windows Safely Remove Hardware feature to Eject an internal or external drive, if you don't use it anymore during the session, or need to prevent any ops on it. I found that in many cases a drive not properly ejected shows problems at the next mount time.
Btw, since internal and external SATA and USB HDDs are ejectable, Windows includes them in
Portable Devices Group in Device Manager. So Windows Media Player (WMP) attempts to scan their content into
PC Media Library each time you start WMP, leading to high CPU and Disk load for extended time periods. To stop this,
Disable the drives you don't want scanned by WMP in Device Manager - Portable Devices. Don't worry - they'll still be normally accessible for regular disk operations.
Alternatively, open WMP -> Organize --> option --> Devices tab --> select the device -> properties -> deselect "Start sync when device connects". You must sync each drive at least once (with at least one file to sync on it) to access
this option, otherwise its Greyed out. Or if your Autoplay setting is On, when connecting such device to PC, select
"End Sync Partnership" in Autoplay Dialog that pops-up.