Western Digital Mybook question.

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All Forums > Tech Talk > Tech Talk Forum Page 22 > Western Digital Mybook question.

Author	Post
RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06	Posted - May 2 2009 : 3:30AM I have one of these Mybook external drives. Lately, I've been using it for all of my music files. The problem is that the damn thing spins down pretty much anytime it isn't being accessed so it's constantly spinning down and back up. Does anyone know if there's a way to turn this "feature" off? At least temporarily. [Link]
ChodeMasterJ Perpetual Marxist 5405 Posts 4/03	Posted - May 2 2009 : 4:33AM i don't think you can. [Link]
Proxy Member 38 Posts 5/09	Posted - May 11 2009 : 4:11PM The problem is more related to the firmware of the system then anything else. You can not "disable" this feature without all kinds of nifty tools (as in hardware) or the ability to rewrite the embedded OS. The "easiest" fix is to create a program that will write to the drive every 9 or so minutes. Why 9 or so minutes? Because the drive spins down after 10 minutes. What OS are you running in conjunction with this drive? [Link]
RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06	Posted - May 12 2009 : 4:05AM Proxy wrote: The "easiest" fix is to create a program that will write to the drive every 9 or so minutes. Why 9 or so minutes? Because the drive spins down after 10 minutes. What OS are you running in conjunction with this drive? Click to expand In that case, it'd probably be easier just to rip the drive out of the fancy WD enclosure and install it into my PC or another inexpensive aftermarket enclosure that doesn't decide when to spin the drive down, no? [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - May 12 2009 : 4:15PM There has been some discussion on Newegg about the spin-down problem of non-enterprise-class WD internal hard drives. Among other things, it's causing these drives to fall out of RAID arrays. Therefore, I'm not sure that your problem is caused by the firmware for the external enclosure; it may be a firmware problem with the drive itself. If so, putting the drive inside your computer won't help. Western Digital apparently says that the spin-down function is part of their new, energy-saving technology. WD has a series of RE (RAID edition) 3.5 hard drives. These are about 50% more expensive than its next-best class of 3.5 hard drives (Black edition) but, supposedly, they are also tested more carefully and are rated for longer life. They don't have the spin-down problem. I'm of the opinion that the best external solution is to select the best internal drive for your purposes and put it in an external enclosure of your choice. Another option to avoid the spin-down while listening to music would be to make playlists from time to time by copying them from your external drive to your system drive and playing them from there. ----------- Edited by - bob on 5/12/2009 5:55:29 PM [Link]

Proxy Member 38 Posts 5/09	Posted - May 12 2009 : 4:27PM RandomPrecision wrote: In that case, it'd probably be easier just to rip the drive out of the fancy WD enclosure and install it into my PC or another inexpensive aftermarket enclosure that doesn't decide when to spin the drive down, no? Click to expand Could be I would just worry that WD put the spin down on the drive itself and not the interface controller board of the book. I like Bob's idea. I will say I have a SSD that kicks ass as an external backup...with a SATA interface to my laptop...but even with SATA the bottleneck is the interface and not the drive. I'm thinking PCIe maybe? [Link]

All Forums > Tech Talk > Tech Talk Forum Page 22Western Digital Mybook question.

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