How can I prevent my WD external drive from spinning down?

[Disillusion]

I have a 500 GB WD My Book external HDD. I want to stop it from spinning down all the time, because I randomly throw files on it and read files from it. I'm using Vista x64. I've already tried disabling the settings for hard drive spin down in the power options and it's still spinning down. I wonder if it's built into the firmware of the drive?

 

[eyeCpc]

My WD external drive spins down after some inactivity. Can I disable this feature?

Question
Do Western Digital external hard drives spin down after a certain amount of inactivity time? How can I disable this feature?

Answer
The external hard drives listed below will spin down (enter into power saver mode) after 10 minutes of drive inactivity. Once the drive is accessed again, the drive will exit from the power saver mode and spin back up.

Please Note: This is a permanent feature of the external hard drives and cannot be disabled.

Answer

That came directly off of WD's Faq section there. Apparently that is how they were designed. I run the MyBook Essential 500gb model here with the same thing seen.

 

[dipique]

If it's really that important, just make a small program that reads and writes a small file every few minutes.

OnTimer()
{
File.Create('C:\File.dat'); //it's important that this file is new
File.Copy('C:\File.dat','D:\File.dat');
File.Delete('D:\File.dat');
File.Delete('C:\File.dat');
}

The important thing is to create the file just before the transfer to prevent the file being stored in RAM. Have the timer go off every two minutes. Have the program run from the system tray. It should have a really small footprint, especially if you design it without a GUI.

Just one possible workaround.

Dan

 

[eyeCpc]

If you are using a laptop you won't want that for sure. The spin down in 10 minutes saves on battery power.

 

[Nitestick]

it doesn't really matter when it uses an external power source.

 

[eyeCpc]

That would depend on the model if portable or simply using a wall adapter. Another thing that can be seen with any constant writing to the drive would be when going to back something up on it and seeing the "drive inaccesible: currently in use by another program" type error.

 

[Disillusion]

Well, this drive is used on my desktop, so it doesn't matter.

I was afraid it might be built into the drive. Too bad there isn't a good work around for this.

I suppose I could do the script that writes a file to it every so often to prevent it from spinning down. I've only had the drive for like a week and I'm already annoyed by waiting for it to spin up when I want to access it.

 

[ohGrFreak]

if you actually notice that type of time, there may be something wrong with the drive. i have a 160 and a 250 and spin up is what, a second? or you may just need to loosen up your schedule a bit. you know you can zap fry a pop tart in 3 seconds?

 

[eyeCpc]

When opening an explorer window here there's immediate access on the 500gb external WD model used here. You should have no more then a few seconds delay at most with a good working drive.

 

[Disillusion]

Well yeah, it's not like it takes forever. It only takes a second or two, but I was just hoping it would stay spinning just for (near) instant access at all times. Oh well, I supposed I can deal with it.