esata external HDD spin down

[jhwk6957]

I have an external 750GB hard drive with about 400GB of movies and 100GB of music on. I use an app called EMIT to stream this content to my phone and nexus 7 when I am on my network. The external Hard drive enclosure has both Esata and USB 2.0. I have it connected to my laptop via USB only because my laptop doesn't have an Esata port.

Anyways, My problem is that if left idle for too long the drive spins down and when I go to access the content via my mobile device it takes FOREVER to spin up again.

My question is that if I found a way to connect this drive to a computer via Esata would the drive spin down like it does when connected via USB?

 

[mwroobel]

A single 750GB drive should take no more than 5-7 seconds to spin up and come ready, I don't know what your definition of Forever is so I cannot compare. What enclosure is your drive in (Brand/Model)? You should be able to set either through the OS (or certain drives you can use the manufacturer utility to set spin-down times)

 

[jhwk6957]

A single 750GB drive should take no more than 5-7 seconds to spin up and come ready, I don't know what your definition of Forever is so I cannot compare. What enclosure is your drive in (Brand/Model)? You should be able to set either through the OS (or certain drives you can use the manufacturer utility to set spin-down times)

This is the External enclosure I have: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042

The drive is a 7200RPM Seagate. Based on the sound of the drive as its spinning up it seems to take only 5-7 seconds. Accessing video from my nexus 7 when the drive is running at full speed is almost instantaneous. However when the drive is spun down accessing video takes more than 30 seconds.

It is just annoying and I am wondering if there is a way to avoid this lag while remotely accessing content off an external harddrive over usb. Changing a setting in Win7 to manage power saving mode of drives makes sense So I will look into that. thanks

 

[mwroobel]

This is the External enclosure I have: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042

The drive is a 7200RPM Seagate. Based on the sound of the drive as its spinning up it seems to take only 5-7 seconds. Accessing video from my nexus 7 when the drive is running at full speed is almost instantaneous. However when the drive is spun down accessing video takes more than 30 seconds.

It is just annoying and I am wondering if there is a way to avoid this lag while remotely accessing content off an external harddrive over usb. Changing a setting in Win7 to manage power saving mode of drives makes sense So I will look into that. thanks

That enclosure has 4 eggs with almost 1200 people reporting, I would expect a design problem like 30 second come-readys to bring down the score. Which model Seagate do you have (7200.9, 10, 11, 12 etc?) Even the older 7200.9's have a standby to active or off to active maximum of 15 seconds, so I don't know why it would take at least 30 seconds. Can you pop another drive into the enclosure and see if it takes as long, that will show where to point the finger.

 

[jhwk6957]

That enclosure has 4 eggs with almost 1200 people reporting, I would expect a design problem like 30 second come-readys to bring down the score. Which model Seagate do you have (7200.9, 10, 11, 12 etc?) Even the older 7200.9's have a standby to active or off to active maximum of 15 seconds, so I don't know why it would take at least 30 seconds. Can you pop another drive into the enclosure and see if it takes as long, that will show where to point the finger.

Well after some thought I don't think the drive itself is taking 30 seconds to spin up. I mean I can access the content on the drive from my laptop around 10 seconds after it begins to spin up Its just that it can take more than 30 seconds to access the content remotely from my tablet which is annoying. I don't think it is a hardware defect I just want to find a way to prevent the hard drive from spinning down when my laptop is on.

Through the advanced windows 7 power options I have found a way to keep my internal laptop drive from spinning down but I can't figure out how to manage the power options of this external drive through windows.

 

[mwroobel]

You can try the following:

Control Panel > power options > change plan settings > change advanced power settings

Hard disk-=>Turn off hard disk Change to maximum or largest

Sleep-=>Sleep after Change To Never

PCI Express-=>Link State Power Management Change to Off

See if any/all of these fix the problem.

 

[jhwk6957]

You can try the following:

Control Panel > power options > change plan settings > change advanced power settings

Hard disk-=>Turn off hard disk Change to maximum or largest

Sleep-=>Sleep after Change To Never

PCI Express-=>Link State Power Management Change to Off

See if any/all of these fix the problem.

Ok thanks I will try these and report back.

 

[jhwk6957]

I found a piece of software that has solved my problem: http://nosleephd.codeplex.com/

install it and select your external drive. Writes bits of data to your drive every specified period of time in order to keep the drive awake. works well so far.