Will "Turn off hard disk after" affect external HDD?

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JamesZhan

JamesZhan

Commendable
Apr 4, 2016
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1,510
Hi,

I have a 5TB external HDD connected to my tower via USB 3.0. Will it be affected by "Turn off hard disk after" or "USB selective suspend setting"?

I just noticed that after it is not being used for a while, I heard it spinning up when I access it again, which took around a second or two, and I don't really want that. But I don't know how I can make it not sleep when idle.

Thanks!
 
Solution
Solandri
I think it depends on the external drive. Some respect Windows' HDD idle power setting, some use a setting built into their or the enclosure's firmware.

If Windows can't control it, just create a batch file which writes random data to the drive at certain intervals. e.g. create a new file named nosleep.bat on the drive in question. It should contain the following text:

:repeat
@echo %RANDOM% > tmp.txt
ping -n 8 127.0.0.1 > NUL
goto repeat

Then in a command prompt, run nosleep.bat. (I think it'll work if you double-click it too - should open its own command prompt.) This batch file writes a random number to the file tmp.txt on the drive (random so it can't be cached) every 8 seconds. You can change the 8 to any other number. of...
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DeadRam

DeadRam

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Jun 14, 2007
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I have a 2 TB external hard drive and it does the same thing. I don't think Windows power options affects external hard drives. I think external hard drives power down because of settings hard coded on the controller board.
 
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Solandri

Solandri

Illustrious
Jan 4, 2012
4,919
98
39,240
I think it depends on the external drive. Some respect Windows' HDD idle power setting, some use a setting built into their or the enclosure's firmware.

If Windows can't control it, just create a batch file which writes random data to the drive at certain intervals. e.g. create a new file named nosleep.bat on the drive in question. It should contain the following text:

:repeat
@echo %RANDOM% > tmp.txt
ping -n 8 127.0.0.1 > NUL
goto repeat

Then in a command prompt, run nosleep.bat. (I think it'll work if you double-click it too - should open its own command prompt.) This batch file writes a random number to the file tmp.txt on the drive (random so it can't be cached) every 8 seconds. You can change the 8 to any other number. of seconds. I originally made this to stave off a 10-15 sec head parking timer on certain WD drives.
 
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