Sleeplessness in Passport country

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Our WD Passport drives (10 drives comprising 3 editions of mostly 4GB 2.5" spinners) are meant for retrievable archives and for backups of the 5 Windows computers on our LAN.

I had hoped and expected that they could be connected via an Anker 10-port Hub to a Caldigit Thunderbolt 3+ docking station attached to a stationary laptop.

But … none of the drives will sleep despite having been set to do so 10 minutes after last usage.

Caldigit says that hubs are not a supported configuration.

Should I conclude from this that the 10-minute scenario is not a drive-located setting that the drive itself enforces? Or is it dynamically governed by Windows-based WD software? Or is it dynamically governed by Windows itself, having once been informed of the sleep setting?

Does a drive need to be connected directly to the Windows host in order to sleep? Will it not sleep if connected to a hub? The drives are visible to WD software regardless of docking station or hub.

Is there a command that can be issued to a drive to make it sleep? Will it wake automatically when requested to fulfill a tasked request?

Is there any way to make drives attached to a docking station or hub sleep according to set parameters?

BTW, all computers are latest Win10Pro.

2

You can try the Mount and UNmount either the from command line or GUI. See the two links below. Hope it help.

3

I appreciate your taking the time to put forward a possible solution here. My hope, of course, is to allow disks to sleep in a timely manner whether by computer or disk control, but in any case without my intervention.

My search for answers has taken me to the possibly-related areas of computer sleep-state (s0 vs s3), Windows Defender side effects, and WD Utilities side effects.

Wish me well … !!

If I come up with an answer, I shall pass it on. And if you have additional insights, please let me know.

With thanks,

ITgreybeard