Sleeping External HDD Slows Down PC

The solution is to install and use the Western Digital Drive Utilities.

It let’s me disable sleeping or adjust the time until it sleeps.

Got a USB 3.0 8TB WD My Book 25EE external HDD connected to a USB 3.0 port on my Lenovo Legion 5 Pro gaming laptop with Windows 10.

This HDD spends most of its time sleeping. There are a number of things I use that wake it up in order to work. Problem is that I have to wait like 7-10 seconds for it to wake up.

Things such as File Explorer, Eject Tool, command prompt, and more.

Can’t even just open up my File Explorer to access files on my laptop’s NVME SSD without waking up this dang HDD. Can’t even empty the recycle bin without a long delay.

I tried fixing this by disabling Power Management on 4 different hubs in Device Manager. This helped, but still goes to sleep.

I worry that not letting it sleep will degrade the drive.

What to do?

All these have their Power Management turned off:

Power Management Off

Hi @somedude007,

Please contact the WD Technical Support team for best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask

The solution is to install and use the Western Digital Drive Utilities.

It let’s me disable sleeping or adjust the time until it sleeps.

Installed WD Drive Utilities. Didn't recognize the WD Elements 10GB drive. What is the idle3 time setting for the following models: (I've got multiples of these.) # WDBWLG0140HBK-NESN # WDBWLG0120HBK-NESN # WDBWLG0100HBK-NESN They keep falling asleep, causing application error messages. I have to do a work-around. Price was good, performance... tunability... totally lacking.

Again: What is the idle3 time setting?

First, make changes in the power and sleep settings. In the Windows search bar, type device manager. When the device manager opens up, scroll to the bottom of the list and expand the arrow next to universal serial bus controllers. Scroll down and click on the USB mass storage device. Right-click and select properties, and in the next window, click on the power management tab and uncheck the box that says allow the computer to turn off this device to save power. And click on.

I guess this method will help your external hard drive not to go to sleep anymore.

3 Likes

Thank you very much. It worked like a charm,
BTH, I think you mean “. And click OK”, not “. And click ok.”
But I figured it out. :slight_smile:
Thanks again

1 Like

This worked perfectly for my WD Black Game Drive 8TB! Definitely the correct solution!