Question [solved] Windows 11: power off external hard drives when laptop goes into standby ?

[hassimo]

hello.

i have the problem on my win 11 notebook, the external hard drives don't power off if the system is going into standby.
i did google a lot, but didn't find anything useful to my surprise.

it did not have this issue on my older win 7 notebook, using the SAME external hard drives. so no, it can't be them.

• ACER Aspire 5 A515-56-79AG (Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM, 1000 GB SSD)
• external 3.5" USB hard drives, seagate (powered by separate adapter), plugged into USB 3.x port

any ideas? thanks in advance.

 

[lvt]

Did you check your Power settings and Advanced power settings to make sure that HDD & USB are allowed to stop?

 

[hassimo]

thanks.

well, i can set the hard drives to turn off when idle, and that works.

but i do NOT have any USB settings there.

i wrote a simple script that disables internet, waits until the drive is idle and then the system goes into standby.
that works only halfway. if i wake the system up, veravrypt (which i use to encrypt the drives) sometimes complaines about disconnected drives. which is bad of course. but sometimes the drives are still mounted in veravrypt.
i have absolutely no clue why it's not always the same.

 

[lvt]

thanks.

well, i can set the hard drives to turn off when idle, and that works.

but i do NOT have any USB settings there.

i wrote a simple script that disables internet, waits until the drive is idle and then the system goes into standby.
that works only halfway. if i wake the system up, veravrypt (which i use to encrypt the drives) sometimes complaines about disconnected drives. which is bad of course. but sometimes the drives are still mounted in veravrypt.
i have absolutely no clue why it's not always the same.

You can try to plug the USB HDD to other USB port to see if the HDD stops.

There might be a setting called "USB charging" that need to be turned off, otherwise the USB port continues to deliver power so that users can charge theirs USB devices using the laptop (even when the system is shutdown).

 

[hassimo]

ok, i kinda "fixed" this by updating windows 11 to 22H2 and also the BIOS to the newest version.

sadly i have no idea now what actually caused the problem.

thanks anyway.