Why does my external hard drive not stop spinning when I put my computer to sleep?

external-hard-drive sleep power-management

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Install the WD Drive Utilities app from Western Digital.

You can then adjust the spin-down time for your USB drive and even turn off the LED if you want:

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Author by

gparyani

Previously known as: damryfbfnetsi Ano The Anonymous Editor Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog (MSE only) From 2014 until late 2017, I helpfully edited hundreds of Meta Stack Exchange posts anonymously.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

gparyani almost 2 years

I have an external Western Digital My Passport hard drive (model WDBYFT0040BBK-WESN), which generally only spins up when it's actively in use, and otherwise stops spinning when it's inactive. When the computer is powered up, this works normally.

However, when I put my computer to sleep, the drive keeps spinning constantly, without ever going to sleep.

Why does the hard drive spin constantly when my computer is asleep, and only when it is awake? I've tested the drive on a number of devices other than computers, and it appears to go to sleep normally, so it's unlikely that the computer itself is controlling its sleep state. Is there any other way to make it stop when I put my computer to sleep than configuring it to not output power over the USB ports when it's sleeping?
gparyani almost 5 years

Already tried this. When I put my laptop to sleep, whatever setting I adjusted here was ignored and the drive kept spinning.
Mr Ethernet almost 5 years

This has nothing to do with the laptop's sleep state. The drive's spin down is determined only by the time-out you specify in the utility. So if you set it to 30 minutes and your actual laptop sleeps in 5 minutes, the WD drive will keep spinning until the full 30 minutes specified in the WD utility has elapsed. These drives completely ignore the sleep state of the computer. They also ignore the "Turn off hard disk after" setting in Windows. I just tested it on my 4 TB model.
gparyani almost 5 years

That's not what I was saying. I have mine set to 10 minutes, and it does sleep after 10 minutes. However, as soon as I put the laptop to sleep, the drive spins up and keeps spinning for hours on end.
Mr Ethernet almost 5 years

Oh I see! Let me test it on mine. Hang on a sec.
Mr Ethernet almost 5 years

I'm actually seeing the same issue as you. I never put my laptop to sleep, so I never noticed this before. I kind of get why it wakes up again when the computer's power state changes but not why it can't go back to sleep while the computer itself is sleeping. I'll open a ticket with WD. Definitely seems to be getting confused by S3 sleep for some reason.
fixer1234 almost 5 years

Is the problem only with S3, none of the other sleep states? BTW, what you report in the comment above is very relevant to the answer. You might want to update the answer with this info.
Mr Ethernet almost 5 years

@fixer1234 turns out all three of my PCs only support S3 sleep. Just confirmed with powercfg /a that they don't support S1 or S2. It's gonna take a while but I'm going to see if I can replicate the OP's issue with the other two computers.
AH. over 4 years

Unfortunately that suggestion does not work.