WD My Book Home Edition (1TB) spindown issues.

[Skyrider]

I have a Western Digital My Book Home Edition (1TB) and I'm having a few issues on it outside the PC world. The issue is the spindown/sleep/idle that happens when it's not being used for a while. Does anyone knows a way to disable this so it won't sleep at all?

 

[Greenberet]

yeah, i wrote a program which opens a file, write 1 byte, closes the file every 2 minutes -> no slowdown xD

 

[Skyrider]

yeah, i wrote a program which opens a file, write 1 byte, closes the file every 2 minutes -> no slowdown xD

Not gonna help outside windows/linux .

 

[phrack50]

I have a Western Digital My Book Home Edition (1TB) and I'm having a few issues on it outside the PC world. The issue is the spindown/sleep/idle that happens when it's not being used for a while. Does anyone knows a way to disable this so it won't sleep at all?

I have 2 of those drives, and I have to put up with the same crap.
Annoying sleep/spindown.... ;(

 

[Skyrider]

I have 2 of those drives, and I have to put up with the same crap.
Annoying sleep/spindown.... ;(

The only way to change this is by doing so through Linux:
http://kyyhkynen.net/stuff/mybook/spindown.php

Haven't tried it yet though.

Here's the answer I received today:

Dear Mr./Mrs. Brandsma,

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is Maarten

Unfortunately the drive will go to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity, this is a feature embedded in the firmware and cannot be disabled.

A work-around for this could be to play an MP3file from the device and keep looping it in the background. It is not ideal.

I hope that we have met your expectations today and that you are satisfied with our service. If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further.

Sincerely,
Maarten
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com

My respond to that:

Then I would kindly request to have a firmware update that can disable this feature. Truth being told, I'm not happy with this feature and would like it to be disabled. I didn't bought this product and expected a spindown in it that can't even be turned off.

 

[Nemix]

im not sure what firm my 1tb external drive is
but i have to plug into (idk how to say on english) you know theres that plug in the wall for electricty
and then connect it to the pc with the usb
and i never god something like this

 

[Skyrider]

Not every External has a spindown Kazuma

 

[Majin_You]

Not meaning to pry, but is there a reason why you want the thing to continue to operate when it's been inactive?

Don't consider me a devil's advocate, but, from the perspective of the average consumer (which is what WD is going to market to), I'd want the thing to spin down when inactive; moving parts wear out after a certain amount of activity, so having those parts "sleep" when they're not needed ensures that I won't be dropping a wad of cash on a new external HDD too soon.

Just curious.

 

[Greenberet]

This can really suck in a game
I had this problem in Overlord I.
Everything gets precached on level load( except some sound files ). So everything was in RAM, you could play without any problems and since everything is precached the disc was idle -> "shutdown". Now the stupid thing happens: The game wants to play a sound( voice ) which wasnt precached -> subtitles were shown, everything was fine, but the sound was played some seconds later...

 

[Majin_You]

That begs the question, then, of why you'd be playing a game off of a portable HDD; I know you can if you wanted to, but I don't think it's what WD had in mind when they tabled the idea. These things are, I'm pretty sure, targeted at people who are looking to back up volumes of data and information. I don't think they intended it to handle the same tasks as your standard, internal HDD.

 

[Greenberet]

That begs the question, then, of why you'd be playing a game off of a portable HDD

to make it simple:
120 GB intern ( Notebook )
- ~80 GB windows
- ~40 GB linux
1TB extern -> games