Power on/off my WD my book pro for backup purpose

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hi all, I have my 500GB my book pro ( WD5000E032) for about 2 years now and I’m quite pleased with it for storing my files.

When I’m not using it, I’m powering it off so it will stay healthy for a long term and won’t waste any energy for no reason.

Lately, I thought to use the my book as a backup drive for my photos folder and I’m trying to create a process that will -

  1. Power on the my book

  2. Make the backup

  3. Power off the my book

I’m using windows 7.

Can I do it? how? do I need any non-WD backup software for that?

2

Anyone??

3

You will need to get a backup software that schedules backups (Windows 7 has one).  Then once you set it, configure Windows Power Management to turn off hard drives after a certain amount of inactivity.  When the scheduled backup starts, it should wake up the drive.  Of course, turning off the drives will turn of your system drive as well.  Otherwise, schedule the backup and just wait.  The My Book Pro should shut off after about 10 minutes.  If it doesn’t, then it’s because there’s software or some utility that’s hitting the drive every so often and keeping it awake.

4

Hi Bill, thank you for your reply.

I have a problem turning off all my drives because they are busy downloading or maintaining …

Therefore, I need a specific shell command or any application that will perform it only on the my book.

Do you know anything like this? does the WD support will know to help me?

5

No, they won’t provide support for something like this.  You will need to research it through Windows support, or over the internet.