Spindown on external USB hard drives

[lugger1]

I have Windows XP, and Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 HDD, and use it as external with enclosure Kingwin, which has JM20316 chipset inside.
I would like to know if it's possible to organize spindown (or stop) of this external drive,in case of inactivity of the computer? Like all internal hdd do, in Windows. I know that some HDD (like Seagate, WD) can do it, there are even special utulities for external HDD, like "WD Spindown or Stop Utility", but it doesn't work with my combination.
My previous HDD was damaged because of overheating in the same enclosure, so i need your suggestions how to make it spindown and prevent overheating. Thanks!

 

[Jahren]

have you taken a look at this website?
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

 

[lugger1]

have you taken a look at this website?
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Thanks for the link, yes, i tried "Power Boost". It can't manage external USB drive, it says:
"This disk drive does not appear to support Advanced Power Management or is not an Hitachi drive. This program is designed to work with Hitachi disk drives that support the ATA/ATAPI Advanced Power Management features. To benefit from the Adaptive Life Extender technology, upgrade to a Hitachi mobile disk drive ". And anyway, even if it works, in AC power this utility sets "full performance mode" to external HDD, which means no spindown or stop to HDD.
Datasheet for my HDD says that it supports Advanced Power Management.

Also they have "Feature Tool" on the website. If i boot it with bootCD, the system doesn't see my external HDD at all. May be something should be included into autoexec.bat there, but i don't know what it needs to recognize external HDD from DOS.

 

[lugger1]

Some people suggest to try HDDscan and change APM and "Idle Timer" parameters of external HDD. And one engineer from WD says that all new HDD supposed to spindown itself in case of inactivity, unless controller of USB-SATA cable constantly sends requests to HDD (even not read-wright related requests). He says that Caviar Green series HDD can spindown even in case of these "not read-wright related requests", BTW.

 

[lugger1]

So far, i have found that spindown of my HDD mostly depends on the Advanced Power Management settings of the HDD itself, and not on the chipset or Windows settings. These can be changed and seen with HDDscan program. When i turn on, and set Advanced Power Management level to 25 (from 255 initially), HDD after several min of inactivity just clicked (when HDD heads were parked, apparently) and slowly spindown. After i try to access the HDD, it starts to spinup and appears in the system in 2-3 sec. Temperature of the HDD in this mode seems to be much lower - about 39-41 C, according to HDDscan.