Do hard drives go to sleep after a certain period of idle time? If so, how long (roughly) is the period before the hard disk spins down?
501857
Not sure if they sleep but I can say these are the best docks I've ever used. They work very well to keep the drives cool.
501858
That usually depends on the BIOS/OS... this did not seem to stop spinning with Win 8.1, but then, I only use it for system back ups.
1071261
I personally had problems with the unit and disconnected from my system. My two systems are tied together with a 2 port KVM switch. If I remember correctly - one of the disks would go to sleep.
2274706
Unfortunately I do not recall hearing or seeing the hard drive power down or stop when idled for an extended period. However, a power switch is available to manually shut down when necessary.
1481077
I have the Wd 4tb ext. HD and it is always on. It does go into a sleep mode when the computer remains on. I have plugged in via USB and it powers off when my computer is powered off. You should know that when it is in sleep mode, the front light blinks slow. When in use, the light blinks rapidly. I had to contact WD because I thought the blinking indicated an error. This was not an error, just the way the HD functions. Hope this helps you, good luck.
121822
Hi, This drive is virtually silent unlike my other external hard drive which makes a lot of noise when active. How quite & cool this drive operates is one of the many things I like about it. It's possible yours could be defective. Maybe you could exchange it for another?
1065463
I generally get around 4.5 hours. Most of the time I use the AC power. I use a hard drive not a solid state.
1481079
The drive spins down according to your computers power settings (as all usbs will) but it never turns off.While spinning its not very noisy (you won't hear it in an office) but its not silent.I'm pretty sure its got wd green cavier as the drive.
450049
Does the same thing happen when you close the lid? I'm thinking that you might have your computer set up to turn off or sleep when the lid is closed. Otherwise, I would suspect that your battery connectors lose contact when jarred and shut the machine down. That is definately not normal, and should be fixed ASAP. The abrupt shutdowns can cause problems.
1593293
I think the manual said there's an automated chime/alarm. it also said something about stopping the other disk and scheduled backups until the new drive was added. I got a backup battery to make sure that I didn't have a drive failure or just a simple write failure do to loss of power.
519354
i believe it is because the "on" switch is still in the "on" position. the drive stays on until it is removed from the desktop and switched off.
621567
Andrew, I am not sure if there is a 'sleep' feature, maybe Seagate Support can weigh-in on this one.
2039325
Did you replace your existing magnetic hard drive with this? I replaced a traditional hard drive on my laptop and found that it was so quiet now I easily hear the processor fan start up and go off. Could that be what you are hearing?
817426
Looks like the drive is set up to go to "sleep" after a period of time. That affects a lot of operations, and there's no direct fix for it.
621570
Like most hard disks these days, the disk in this device enters sleep mode after a few minutes. This causes a slight delay when accessing it after the timeout. The power consumption is interesting - I received one with a 2 amp 12VDC power supply, and the device wouldn't start up. Once I replaced that with a 4 amp power supply, the hard disk spun up and the device started. Even 4 amp at 12VDC is negligible in terms of a home's power consumption, though, and as the disk spins down I should think the average power drain is minute.
905425
I have 5 Canvios of different sizes, including this one. Each one will stop spinning and 'sleep' after a few minutes of inactivity which is great since no one wants any disk spinning 24/7. It usually takes several seconds to spin them back up and the activity lights are good indicators. Hope that helps a little.
75176
I have two of them and love them. I believe the power button is binary: either on or off. However, I do know that drives do power down when the unit is powered on but the computer is sleeping. And they spin back up correctly when the computer wakes up.
308545
The unit has a red LED for power and a blue LED for activity. The red is always on, the blue one does go off if there is no disk activity for a period of time. ( Sorry, I didn't measure the time) Also, I have an HHD, and if you check the unit up the disk is not spinning.So the short answer is : I believe it does, but the unit is always powered up unless turned off ( Rocker switch on the back of the unit) But the disk does spin down until it is used once again.