My passport essential slow boot up time and frequent time outs

in my wd software the sleep time is set at 30 minutes.

but if I open a folder to open some images on my passport drive, the drive seems to go into resting mode in fewer than 5 minutes.

for example i open a folder on the drive and open up image number 1.  the drive light blinks and i have to wait about 2 to 3 seconds before the image actually gets loaded and i can see it, it short of hangs.

then if i immediately open a second image it will open up fast.

but if i dont access the drive for 5 minutes and then try to open up a 3rd image again i have to wait 2 to 3 seconds for the drive to boot up from idle state and load my image. 

these delays are very frustrating and i need to stop the drive from timing out and going into resting mode so frequently.

how do i do it ?

Since what you have is a Passport, the Hard Drive in it spins only when data is need to be read.

Correct me if I’m wrong but all hard drives act like this, even the ones inside your computer acts thesame however they react faster since they’re using SATA compared to USB.

I believe the operating system settings over-rule the Smartware-assigned settings.

Since the Passports are powered by USB power, I wouldn’t be surprised if the USB sleep-related OS settings come into play, and not any drive-related settings.  In other words, even if your OS power mode is set for _ drives _ to never sleep, I wouldn’t be surprised if an “unused” USB port drifts off to sleep.  I’m not exactly sure where you’d change that, tho.

I think there are 2 places to change settings. One is in device manager right click on USB hubs properties power management. The other is in  power management in advanced settings.