External hard drive won't sleep.

[jmvideo]

Hi
I have a 120gb external USB2 hard drive that won't spin down when I put my Vista laptop to sleep. Is there a way I can get this to do it automatically rather than switching it off manually?

It's powered by a power adapter and plugs in through a powered 7 port hub. Even if plugged directly into the laptop, it doesn't make any difference.

The laptop power settings are set for hard drives to sleep after 30 mins but I'm not aware of this happening as the two internal drives are so quiet! The external drive, however, does emitt enough noise for me to tell that it's not spinning down.

The drive has got a Firewire connection as well but I don't know whether this would be any different.

Hope you can help.

Regards

John

 

[Kornowski]

Hi John,

I've never owned an external drive before, But I'm guess it doesn't power it self down as it's a USB peripheral. I have a USB Wireless Adaptor, when I turn my computer off or onto stand by it doesn't turn off, the green LED is still illuminated.

Does switching it off manually cause any inconvenience to you?

 

[cohen]

i do, i know what is happening.

When your laptop is a sleep the USB ports are still active, so they (USB ports) are still supplying power to the external hard drive, the USB ports don't supply enough power for the hard drive to spin fully like it is readying files of it, but enough to keep it spinning and active.