[GUIDE] prevent the drive from "sleeping"

i bought a 1tb mybook recently & was quite satisfied with it. the only annoying thing about it is that it keeps “sleeping” if it hasn’t been accessed in 10 minutes. here’s a nice little trick to fix that…

to prevent the drive from sleeping, we have to “touch” the drive every nine minutes.

first we need to create a BAT file. open notepad & paste this in:

echo ! > %1:\!
del/q %1:\!

save the file as “touch.bat” (w/o quotes) & save it in your C drive or anywhere else you like.

if you’re curious about the code, here’s how it works: the first line creates a “!” file (it’s just a 3-byte ascii file that contains the “!” character) & writes it on the external drive; & the second line deletes the “!” file created previously. the “%1” allows the bat file to use parameters so we can specify our target drive letter later on.

after creating the BAT file, we need to create a scheduled task. do that by typing “tasks” (w/o quotes) in RUN; or open it by going to START > ALL PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > SYSTEM TOOLS > SCHEDULED TASKS.

click “Add Scheduled Task” to start the wizard.

hit next, then browse for the “touch.bat” we created previously.

for “Perform this task”, choose “Daily”.

set: Start time = “12:00 AM” & Perform this task = “Every Day”.

keep clicking “next” & on the last page, put a check on the “Open advance properties…” before clicking finish.

on the new window, edit it so it looks similar to this:

on the Run field, append the drive letter your external drive is assigned to (this is the parameter we discussed earlier). in my case, my WD MyBook is drive Z so the field reads “C:\touch.bat z”

on the Run as field, make sure to type in: “NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM” (w/o quotes). why do we need to do this? so that the task will be executed in the background so you’ll never see it running & it’ll never interfere with your work. if you don’t do this, you’ll see an annoying small black dos box everytime the task runs.

also, make sure that “Run only if logged on” is NOT checked.

if it asks you for a password, just leave it blank.

now let’s move on to the 'Schedule" tab. click the “Advanced” button & edit it to look like this:

set the task to repeat every 9 minutes for 24 hours.

click “OK” & we’re done!

you won’t have to worry about having your MyBook spin down & sleep due to inactivity ever again since your pc now “touches” the drive every 9 minutes.

on a side note, you can also set the Power Management options on the “Settings” tab if you want to tweak it for use with a laptop.

there you have it folks. hope this helps. :slight_smile:

The new smartware drives comes with an option to change the sleep timer, You can manually set the sleep timer by changing the values in Settings.

Please make this guide for windows 7 users.

Please make this guide for windows 7 users.