Will WDidle3 work safely on a WD Elements 1TB external drive?

[Lumia925]

Just got this drive yesterday. Ran the extended SMART test using HDSentinel and it PASSED.
Everything's working cool, my only problem is that the drive goes to sleep after like 15 seconds of inactivity.

The power options in my computer is set to spin down drives after 15 minutes, and my Seagate Expansion drives (got 2 of em, 1TB each) respect this setting (they go to sleep after 15 minutes), but for some reason my new WD Elements drive does not. It spins down every 15 seconds of inactivity.

Such aggressive spin down settings cannot be good for a drive that will be used as an expansion (not a backup drive) and will stay connected all thru the day- it will spin up and spin down hundreds of times each day!

And of course file access slows down. Every time i want to access a file on this drive, the computer waits for a couple of seconds for the drive to spin up....


Any solution???

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, @Lumia925!

I'd definitely NOT advice you to use the WDidle3 because it can only be applied to certain HDD models. I believe you have a much simpler solution to the issue, though! All you need to do is download WD Drive Utilities for Windows from the Support page on our website. This software allows you to register your WD Elements, set drive timer, run diagnostics and perform drive erase.
You can read more about How to set up and use the WD Drive Utilities here.

Hope it helps. Let me know if you encounter further issues.
Cheers,
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Lumia925]

Hey there, @Lumia925!

I'd definitely NOT advice you to use the WDidle3 because it can only be applied to certain HDD models. I believe you have a much simpler solution to the issue, though! All you need to do is download WD Drive Utilities for Windows from the Support page on our website. This software allows you to register your WD Elements, set drive timer, run diagnostics and perform drive erase.
You can read more about How to set up and use the WD Drive Utilities here.

Hope it helps. Let me know if you encounter further issues.
Cheers,
SuperSoph_WD

Thanks SuperSoph for your help, really appreciated.
Unfortunately, it looks like WD drive utilities for Windows does NOT support the Elements drive.
I get this message:

I've tried ejecting/reconnecting the drive, connecting to a different USB port, and restarting the computer- the computer detects the drive fine and allows me to use it, but the WD software fails to detect the drive...

I've since tried this registry hack:

HKLM\Software\CurrentControlSet\Control\USBSTOR\1058xxxx\DeviceHackFlags had a value (auto-defined) of 8. Changed it to 400, ejected and re-connected the drive.
It still does not respect the spin-down setting of my power profile, however it doesn't spin-down after every 15 seconds. Instead, it now spins down after about 30 minutes of inactivity (power-profile is set to spin-down hard drives after 15 minutes).
This is the best I could come up with. Is there a way to make the drive respect the spin-down settings that I've defined in power options?
Once again, thank you for your help..