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I really can't google this one out, so if someone could give me some advice
I'm on a laptop, I'm using Windows 8.1 currently
Recently I bought an SSD and set it up as my system drive
I've taken out my CD drive and inserted a hard drive bay where I have a 1TB WD Blue
If I'm not accessing the 1TB drive it goes to sleep/standby/stops spinning every 20 seconds
In Power Management the drives are set to shutdown in 10 minutes (not 20 seconds)
For example, I'm listening to music, and I stop playback. About 20 seconds passes and the drive spins down. What is going on? I've read that drives go to sleep but after 10, 15, 20 minutes, not every 20 seconds. Is the hard drive bay firmware doing this maybe? Or is this a feature of modern drives? Won't this make the drive die sooner, wear it out? When I resume music playback there's a pause until the hard drive starts spinning again and it's kind of annoying, is there a cure for this?
I've had this 1TB drive as my main drive, and a smaller SSD in the CD drive bay with Ubuntu on it, and it never behaved like this, it would shutdown after couple of minutes, if I remember correctly.
zorvalent
Posted 2015-01-26T12:08:25.457
Reputation: 168
With Windows OS , the hard drive can be powered down when not in use. This can occur very quickly. What OS are you using – Dave – 2015-01-26T12:21:49.987
Sorry for not mentioning this, I'm using Windows 8.1 64bit, hard drive has a 10 minute shutdown setting put in Power Management, if that's what you're referring to. – zorvalent – 2015-01-26T12:27:23.617
Open device manager. Find it in there, right click, properties. See if there is an option, under Power Management, to uncheck "Allow the Computer to turn off this device to save power" – Dave – 2015-01-26T12:29:28.130
I can't find an option like when right clicking on hard drive properties in Device Manager. I've setup this application, http://keepalivehd.codeplex.com/, to write a file every 15 seconds to keep the drive alive, but I would still like to know what's causing hard drive to turn off after only 20 seconds.
– zorvalent – 2015-01-26T12:42:07.843It shouldn't normally shut down so often. I would try booting Ubuntu to check how long will it take then to spin down. That should at least give you an idea if Windows is responsible for this behavior. You can also run WD DLG to check the HDD's health, just to make sure there are no issue with it. You can download WD DLG here: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=pYZjpc
– Techpumpkin_WD – 2015-01-26T13:20:51.607Best solution is to write a script that writes the datestamp to a file on the drive if it exists. I've had major problems with drives powering down (billed as "features" that you can't switch off, even when you change the settings).
Just to clarify I've got a Sharkoon 5 bay box that does the exact same thing. The only thing that stopped it sleeping was writing a file to it every so often. – ScottMcGready – 2015-01-26T13:35:01.790
I guess I'll have to play around with it more. Shutting the hard drive every 20 seconds is just insane. – zorvalent – 2015-01-26T13:55:38.070
Please don't forget to share your findings, I'm curious what is causing this. – Techpumpkin_WD – 2015-01-26T15:41:13.137
@zorvalent: Appears to be a duplicate of http://superuser.com/questions/849386/hdd-in-optical-bay-spins-down-and-up-constantly (which itself has incorrectly been marked as a duplicate). Is your laptop also a HP by any chance?
– James P – 2015-01-26T16:04:29.400check this MSDN blogpost: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usbcoreblog/archive/2013/11/08/help-after-installing-windows-8-1-my-usb-device-doesn-t-charge-or-it-disconnects-and-reconnects-frequently.aspx
– magicandre1981 – 2015-01-26T16:29:11.387@James, you are right, these do look like similar issues, I'm sorry for opening a new question. I don't have an HP, my laptop is Lenovo. If anyone is going to read this, I have a Seagate drive as my external drive (in an enclosure), so just to test things out I put it in my laptop instead of the WD and it works correctly, no spindowns, and it doesn't spin as hard as WD drive does. Go figure. – zorvalent – 2015-01-26T19:18:21.240
Ok, the loudness is probably due to the fact that WD is a 1TB drive, while the Seagate is a 500GB drive, but it seems that WD actually has this set in drive firmware to shut them down every couple of seconds, what in the name of actual F... is this, I would give money to not have this as a hard drive feature.... – zorvalent – 2015-01-26T19:36:13.257
@zorvalent I mistakenly bought WD Green's a while back and it pulled this on me. I understand they're trying to be all eco-friendly and shut down the drives when not in use but it caused havoc with my setup because drives were dying all over the place. – ScottMcGready – 2015-01-27T08:51:07.457
@ScottMcGready I know, but this is the Blue series of drives, and I wasn't expecting it to have this very useful feature. WD has tools that can be used to turn off this aggressive standby, but not for the Blue series. I'll try to contact them when I find the time and ask them if there's a way that this can be shut down because it's very annoying. – zorvalent – 2015-01-27T10:33:15.163
@zorvalent the tools they supply don't work on any of the drives I've bought from them. Honestly, I gave up and just wrote a script to keep the thing alive when connected. Simpler for me and less hassle! – ScottMcGready – 2015-01-27T11:09:25.057
@ScottMcGready I've actually sent them a support ticket, I'd like to get to the bottom of this. I'll post here once I hear back from them. – zorvalent – 2015-01-27T11:47:42.240
Yeah, there's no help from the support. I explained what the problem was and they asked me to perform tests with the WD diagnostic utilities, and then asked me to register the device on the website, treated the drive as though it cannot be detected, completely ignoring what I asked them about frequent spin downs. I'll just use this drive as my external and the other smaller Seagate drive as a data drive in my laptop. In other words I give up..... – zorvalent – 2015-01-28T12:24:39.107