I have the new 1tb My Passport Essential SE it seems to go to sleep after a little while. when it does this the program using it freezes up is there anyway to stop this from happening?
Are you using smartware? If you have installed it, under the drive setup there is a sleep feature. You can set this to a time length or you can set it to never, but this will only work if you have SmartWare installed. Once installed there is an option under settings or drive setup that will allow you to adjust these settings.
what happens if you remove this software after you change the setting to “never”?
Does the drive itself retain the setting? Will it stick after a power failure? I’d like to know where/how the “NEVER” setting is stored…
If I understand the infromation I have read about the drive and WD SmartWare software, if the software is installed then it will control the power save mode of the drive. If you uninstall the software then the drive reverts back to the drives firmware which should put the drive into power save after 10 min of no activity.
According to Bill_S: “The external drive will retain the setting after SmartWare is uninstalled.”
I’m not sure where it retains the setting, but that’s good enough for me 
Thanks for posting that, I guess you learn something new everyday. lol If that is the case then it probable saves it on the internal chip of the drive.
Good luck
