Have External Hard Drive Shut Down when Hibernating

[A1t Ross]

Is is possible to have an external hard drive sleep or shut off when your computer is asleep/hibernating? My last one would shut down when I put my computer to sleep, but this replacement of the same model just runs and runs even though my computers been hibernating for hours.

Was I wrong in my belief that they are supposed to sleep with your computer?
Running Windows 10 and using a My Book 3TB

 

[jr9]

External HDD generally turn off when their their external power or USB connection to the PC is lost. If the PC hibernates there is no USB traffic (I think) so the HDD should just shut down when hibernating.

Does it shut off when you disconnect the USB cable? Perhaps your new drive doesn't shut off until power is lost.

 

[A1t Ross]

External HDD generally turn off when their their external power or USB connection to the PC is lost. If the PC hibernates there is no USB traffic (I think) so the HDD should just shut down when hibernating.

Does it shut off when you disconnect the USB cable? Perhaps your new drive doesn't shut off until power is lost.

That's what I thought. It does shut off when I unplug or eject it. Maybe it's because I often have a video file open that is stored on the drive when I hibernate the computer. But again, I did that all the time with my last one and it didn't stay on like this.

 

[jr9]

One workaround I suppose is in the system tray to eject the drive if it is a "removable disk" and see if it shuts down. That or unplug it before you use sleep.

I would try to see if having nothing using the drive at all helps.

 

[A1t Ross]

One workaround I suppose is in the system tray to eject the drive if it is a "removable disk" and see if it shuts down. That or unplug it before you use sleep.

I would try to see if having nothing using the drive at all helps.

Ejecting and unplugging does shut it down, but I never had to do this with my last one, so I expected this one to be the same, as its the same model. XD

 

[jr9]

Perhaps your new one is a different revision or has different firmware than the older one. The odds of this would increase as time between the old and new drive purchase grows. I would try:

- Try WD SmartWare (old version) or WD Drive utilities (latest version for newer My Book drives) to manually configure sleep setting, make sure that sleep mode is on and set a sleep timer for idle.

- Update the WD Drive's firmware to the latest with WD Universal Firmware Updater from the support page.

- Try enabling USB selective suspend in Windows power options (edit the plan) and that should cut power to USB after a period of time.

 

[Vic 40]

Maybe in windows energy settings things can be changed?

 

[A1t Ross]

Perhaps your new one is a different revision or has different firmware than the older one. The odds of this would increase as time between the old and new drive purchase grows. I would try:

- Try WD SmartWare (old version) or WD Drive utilities (latest version for newer My Book drives) to manually configure sleep setting, make sure that sleep mode is on and set a sleep timer for idle.

- Update the WD Drive's firmware to the latest with WD Universal Firmware Updater from the support page.

- Try enabling USB selective suspend in Windows power options (edit the plan) and that should cut power to USB after a period of time.

Now that I think about it, it only does this with my computer that runs Windows 10. It doesn't do it with my old laptop. So if its windows 10 that's the issue, do you think updating the firmware might still help?

 

[A1t Ross]

Maybe in windows energy settings things can be changed?

I can't see anything that might help, but then, I certainly could be missing something.