Can I ever get my attached hard drive to stop spinning?

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

The player seems to be working fine with my hard drive, but it never stops spinning even once I eject it or shut the WD Live player off, or both. Is there a way to stop the hard drive off and keep it attached?

It kind of defeats the purpose if I have to keep unplugging and replugging it in every time I want to use it. 

2

I’ve notice the same thing. Shouldn’t the unit enable the usb drive to power down??? I don’t like the idea of my drive spinning 24/7.

3

It might help if you said what kind of hard drive it is… spin-down behavior is usually determined by the drive not the player…

4

I have a 2 TB WD Caviar Green (WD20AERS) connected using a SATA to USB adapter. I guess it only makes sense that the drive doesn’t power down since it is getting it’s power from an external adapter. Also, even when the WD TV is off (on standby) the drive is still accessible from the network. The green drive has internal power saving features so it shouldn’t be using too much power when idle anyway.

5

You are correct about that. The greens won’t use a lot of power, and all WD internal drives are designed to run around the clock.

That being said, if you wanted a drive that “spun-down” you might consider a WD external such as a My Book Essential. They are designed to spin-down when idle. I’m not a big fan of these drive types myself, but if this is a priority feature for you, than it would be a better choice than to go with a third-party company.

Keep in mind that “build-your-own” solutions often have issues like this and its difficult to get support because the enclosure manufactuer will point at the hard drive, and the hard drive manufactuer will point at the enclosure. Thats the real advantage of buying a pre-built drive - both the enclosure and the drive are made by the same people.

6

Thanks for that info. I tried using my Iomega older external usb powered drive and saw that it powered down. So I went to the store last night and bought a WD My Book Essentials drive and found it powered down properly too.

I will be returning my Seagate portable one since it never powers down.