I have 2 My Book 8tb and 1 4tb external drives and have them all set to sleep after 45 minutes. They do in fact enter sleep mode after 45 min. but after a while, wake up on their own for no reason. ALL 3 drives do this! Again, I have the software set on all for 45 min. What’s causing this?
Hi @mctalks,
Thanks for reporting the issue.
Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask
Yes, I filled out the Support Case form but have yet to receive a response. Not even an acknowledgement that my submission was received.
NOT SOLVED: I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Drive Utilities and thought it might have solved my issue, but it has not. I filled out a new support case today but thought I’d post here again just in case someone reads this and can offer any different suggestions.
Thanks.
Three years later… did anybody get a solution to this? I just downloaded the WD Drive Utilities, and all they let me do is specify the sleep timer on/off and time increments of 10 to 90 minutes. Why does the drive wake up randomly… like at 6 in the morning when nobody’s using the computer? I note also that Windows 11 reported “surprise removal” events for the drive at the same time. Any ideas?
After trying a lot of different things and dealing with a lot of frustration, I finally just uninstalled WD Drive Utilities all together and that solved the problem for me. They still go to sleep after 45 minutes, but the random wake-ups have stopped. Since I posted this, I had added 3 Elements drives and they would never seem to spin down, even when not in use. Once I got rid of Drive Utilities, that stopped too, so clearly that software is buggy. I now just use Crystaldisk Info to check S.M.A.R.T. data and if I want to run a diagnostic, I’ll just use WD Dashboard ( now Kitfox ). Although it doesn’t have the option to adjust the sleep timers, it doesn’t matter since I already set them where I want them. The bottom line is that this program doesn’t randomly wake up the My Book drives and the Elements Drives now spin down and park as they should when not in use. Hope this helps.
