Question Why are my 2.5" SATA hard drives automatically going to sleep ?

[Root602]

I have three 2.5" hard drives:

1. Western Digital Black 500GB 7200RPM 2.5" 9.5mm
2. Seagate Barracuda 2TB 5400RPM 2.5" 7mm
3. Samsung SpinPoint 640GB 5400RPM 2.5" 9.5mm

I connected them with a SetMSpace USB C to USB 3 hard drive enclosure. It's USB attached SCSI.

The first auto sleeps after 10 minutes, the second one 9 minutes, and the third one sleeps after 10 minutes.

My other hard drive enclosure is called "2.5" SATA EXTERNAL CASE USB 3.0 Super speed" and is in reality USB 2. With it the Seagate Barracuda auto sleeps after 9 minutes and I can access the drive, while the Western Digital Black, and Samsung SpinPoint turn on for 10 seconds then turn off. I can't access the drives during this time and they are not visible in Device Manager.

I have the Ultimate Performance plan enabled in Windows, all of my universal serial bus controllers power saving mode is off, and USB Selective Suspend is disabled.

 

[hedwar2011]

Even though you have the Ultimate Performance plan chosen, did you double-check to make sure that the HDD power settings are set to Never directly? I've seen instances where the end user made the change but it didn't stick for whatever reason.

1) Do either of the enclosures have software that controls them?
2) How are the enclosures listed in Device Manager?

 

[Root602]

Even though you have the Ultimate Performance plan chosen, did you double-check to make sure that the HDD power settings are set to Never directly? I've seen instances where the end user made the change but it didn't stick for whatever reason.

1) Do either of the enclosures have software that controls them?
2) How are the enclosures listed in Device Manager?

I changed it to Never now (before it was on 0) and after 10 minutes it turns off again. 1) No. 2) USB Attached SCSI (UAS) Mass Storage Device is the SetMSpace enclosure. The other enclosure completely stopped working.

 

[hedwar2011]

Something else has to be causing it to power off then if you disabled it in Windows and it still turns off after 10 minutes.
1) Check in your BIOS and see if there is a USB suspend state option there and disable it.
2) USB Attached SCSI doesn't have power management options within Windows unfortunately so that isn't going to be a contributing factor. When was the last time it worked correctly and didn't turn off after 10 minutes? Has it ever?

 

[Root602]

Something else has to be causing it to power off then if you disabled it in Windows and it still turns off after 10 minutes.
1) Check in your BIOS and see if there is a USB suspend state option there and disable it.
2) USB Attached SCSI doesn't have power management options within Windows unfortunately so that isn't going to be a contributing factor. When was the last time it worked correctly and didn't turn off after 10 minutes? Has it ever?

1) There's no such option in the BIOS. 2) It never worked correctly, since I got it it's been like this. Maybe all 2.5" hard drives have an auto sleep mode that can't be turned off, meaning it's hard coded into the drive itself? All 3.5" drives I have spin 24/7.

 

[hedwar2011]

It could be hard coded into the controller in the enclosure too.

 

[Root602]

It could be hard coded into the controller in the enclosure too.

Two of my 2.5" drives would auto sleep when directly attached to my desktop and my laptop, with hard drive sleep disabled in Windows. When playing a game, every 10 minutes the game would stutter. The other drive would spin up and spin down every 9 minutes. All you could hear was it spinning up, then spinning down, repeat 6 times an hour. I got fed up and put a 3.5" drive and now it spins all the time, but now I have 3 hard drives just catching dust and I can't use them for anything.

 

[hedwar2011]

In all my years in this industry I've never heard of a 2.5" drive having a built in sleep mode like what you're describing. I'm wondering if it's just the spin-down of the drive heads that is occurring and it acts like it's going to sleep.

I checked out the specs for all 3 drives you listed and none of them have self-imposing power options or eco-friendly requirements so it's odd that it would be doing something like that.

 

[Root602]

I'm wondering if it's just the spin-down of the drive heads that is occurring and it acts like it's going to sleep.

I'm not sure. There is no sound coming from the hard drive when it stops spinning and it takes 10 seconds to access my data again when I open a folder on the disk.

 

[hedwar2011]

That's likely what is happening then cause it's certainly not going to be instant like with an SSD. The read module has to have time to access the heads and them spin back up but it is strange that they are spinning down every 10 minutes.

For kicks and giggles, boot into Safe Mode (yes its going to be limited in use), and see if the same thing happens there.