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#11
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Western Digital "My Book" - Questions
This subject has been discussed befo
"Need prog. to prevent hdd going into idle (such as a perdiodic access?)" "bxf" wrote in message ups.com bxf wrote: bxf wrote: Andreas Keppler wrote: "bxf" wrote: I've just done the above, and my dummy script is in fact an empty file I've named Dummy Access.bat. The only unpleasant side-effect is the flashing of the Command Prompt screen every time the task is executed. There may be a way to prevent this, but I don't know of one yet. It appears that if you give your empty file a VBS extension rather than .BAT, there is no "flashing Command Prompt" screen. It appears that executing an empty script, even if it resides on the USB drive, does not prevent it from spinning down after a few minutes. I assume Windows must be caching the script or something, hence avoiding an actual access to the drive. I'm going to create a script that will allocate and write to a file on the drive ("M" in my case), and it looks like this: Option Explicit Dim objFSO, objUSBFile Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set objUSBFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile("M:\Dummy Access.txt", True) objUSBFile.WriteLine("This is a dummy file") objUSBFile.Close Wscript.Quit I'll create a Scheduled Task that will invoke this script every few minutes, and I expect this should keep the drive active. I'll try it tomorrow. |
#12
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Western Digital "My Book" - Questions
Folkert Rienstra wrote:
This subject has been discussed befo "Need prog. to prevent hdd going into idle (such as a perdiodic access?)" Ah, yes. Discussed to death, from what I see. |
#13
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Western Digital "My Book" - Questions
Well Andreas, the script I have above works in stopping the drive from spinning down. You can just save it somewhere (change the "M" to the appropriate drive letter) and set up a scheduled task to run it every nine minutes. WD emphatically says that there is no way to stop the spin-down function. For this, and other info, you may want to go to the WD site Support FAQ and do a search using the keywords SMART POWER - some interesting stuff there, including instructions on how to open up the MYBOOK case. |
#14
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Western Digital "My Book" - Questions
"Andreas Keppler" wrote in message
"bxf" wrote: My MYBOOK included WD Diagnostics software, which enables me to view the SMART data on the WD drive You might wanna tell babblebot I and babblebot II about it. They repeatedly say that it can't be done. Unfortunately, I can't take a screenshot of the output, but I assure "them" that it works - unless the utility is pulling numbers out of the air. The utility is called "Western Digital Data Lifeguard for Windows - DLGDIAG for Windows". I suspect (not sure) that anybody can down- load it from the WD site. Bill was right! Even if I couldn believe it! :-) I tried several times to read the SMART-status of my "my book pro" (USB2.0 and Firewire400) with a Firewire-Connection and it didnt work. After that I searched a lot at google-groups and found a lot of postings reporting that the IDE-Commands cant be sent through Firewire That's not my impression from this group. That would apply to USB. or some Controllers. Likely the latter. I believe the Firewire interface has a better defined software interface for the Firewire "Tailgate" ( 1394 to IDE bridge). http://www.t13.org/project/d1248r4-1394-Tailgate.pdf " 1 Scope This standard specifies the protocol for passing ATA and ATAPI commands over the 1394 bus. It provides a common attachment interface for systems manufacturers, system integrators, soft- ware suppliers, and suppliers of intelligent storage devices. " I'm not aware of any similar specification for an USB bus tailgate. Now I connected my "mybook" with USB1.1 (dont have USB 2.0) and it works: http://i11.tinypic.com/2hfo1s7.gif With a firewire-Connection to my mybook the Mybook didnt appear at "physical devices" and I couldnt scan it. But if I connect the mybook after booting it appears, even if the SMART-Mode cant be read at once. http://i11.tinypic.com/2yvus02.gif But I can start a Smart-Scan with a pleasing result :-) http://i11.tinypic.com/44unamo.gif Unfortunately it says "SMART Status: Not Available" Andy |
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Western Digital "My Book" - Questions
"Andreas Keppler" wrote "bxf" wrote: ------------- Option Explicit Dim objFSO, objUSBFile [etc] wow! massively over engineered script when the following *single line* directly in scheduled tasks "run box" would do the same: echo "This is a dummy file" G:\dummyfile.txt (or put the same line in a nostandby.bat file) -- Mike |
#16
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Western Digital "My Book" - Questions
Andreas Keppler wrote:
"bxf" wrote: ------------- Option Explicit Dim objFSO, objUSBFile Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set objUSBFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile("M:\Dummy Access.txt", True) objUSBFile.WriteLine("This is a dummy file") objUSBFile.Close Wscript.Quit ---------------- I'll create a Scheduled Task that will invoke this script every few minutes, and I expect this should keep the drive active. I'll try it tomorrow. This script doesnt run here even if I change your drive "M" to "G". (my mybook is "G") I saved the script as "nostandby.vbs" and created a scheduled Task. Every time XP starts the script, XP says that it couldnt execute the script cause of entering the wrong password or Username! (but the password I used is the same I need for logging into XP!) If I dont provide a password and start the script XP complains about not using a password in the scheduled task! :-) I think I've seen some fix or update related to this - can't recall where. You'll have to search yourself. Maybe it was wrong that I used the extension .vbs! vbs is correct. I dont know, I am not a programmer! :-) I tried with no extension but the problem remains the same! Hope you can help me! :-) Thanks a lot! Andy |
#17
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Western Digital "My Book" - Questions
Believe it or not, I'm an excellent technical programmer :-) - been
doing it for over 35 years, over 25 of them as a freelancing contractor. Problem is, it's all been on mainframes, so when I want to do something on a PC, I'm limited. In this case, my logic says that I want to write a record to a file, so let me find examples of how this is done. And you see the results. At least it works. Having knowledge of the features of a given language always helps, but one only picks up these things through experience. In fact, I've told myself several times that I should make an effort to learn, and in the past I've always found that the best way for me to learn is to write something simple, then repeatedly expand on it, often using some additional features of the language. Unfortunatelty, I can't think of anything to write that would be useful enough to keep me motivated. Bill Mike Redrobe wrote: "Andreas Keppler" wrote "bxf" wrote: ------------- Option Explicit Dim objFSO, objUSBFile [etc] wow! massively over engineered script when the following *single line* directly in scheduled tasks "run box" would do the same: echo "This is a dummy file" G:\dummyfile.txt (or put the same line in a nostandby.bat file) -- Mike |
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