craigm wrote:
Andreas Keppler wrote:

"bxf" wrote:


I can´t find any information about the standby-mode of the Western
Digital My Book - harddrive!

I could only find a lot of reviews talking about a standby-mode after 5
minutes!

But I don´t want to turn of the HD´s motor! (for a longer life of the
HD)

For what it's worth, WD says that although spinning up and down
repeatedly DOES present the drive with greater wear and tear than if
it's continuously spinning, this is true only up to a point, and the
drive's design is such that it is expected to spin down several times a
day. I think I saw this somewhere in the WD FAQ.

First of all, thank you for your explanations!

Its good to hear that the spinning up and down doesnt harm the HD but
I think that there is a standard HD inside the mybook!
(Do you know how to open the plastic case?)


Yesterday I bought the 250GB-MyBook with USB2.0 and Firewire400 and
connected it via Firewire.

I am very satisfied with everything but I cant understand why WD
doesnt deliver a tool with which users can prevent the standbye-mode
or change the time for this mode!

Do you know a tool which sends (reads) a command to the HD every one
minute so it doesnt go in standby?


One more question: Do you know how the read the S.M.A.R.T.-Status via
Firewire/USB2.0? It seems that this isn´t possible! :-(


Andy

For the benefit of those trying to help you....

If you let the drive spin down, how many times in a day would it have to
spin up as you access it?

Do you plan to keep it spinning 24 hours a day?

How long do you expect the drive to run before failing?

Have you considered that the spinning drive will be running much hotter than
if it is allowed to spin down?

Have you considered that the enclosure is already designed to give the best
reliability?

These are all valid points, and correspond to WD's claims that it is
not necessarily preferable to run the drive continously as opposed to
letting it spin down occasionally. My own "problem" relates to the fact
that I use the drive only for specific purposes, but it spins up every
time I invoke Explorer, hence I usually just pull out the USB cable and
keep the drive off until I need it. It would be more convenient if I
could accomplish this with a switch, but, as I mentioned earlier, when
using the power button on the drive, the drive will power up when
rebooting after a complete shutdown.

My efforts regarding the script and Scheduled Task are more for
experimentation than anything else.