Spindown time

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

What is the spindown time (how long does it take to go into power-saving spindown mode) for the WD 2TB Elements Portable USB 3.0 HDD (WDBU6Y0020BBK-NESN) ?

For example:

I have a 1TB Elements Portable, and it stops spinning after 10 minutes of inactivity.

I also have a 500GB Elements Portable, and it stops spinning after 9 seconds of inactivity.

Thanks!

2

Hello,

The sleep time actually depends on the setting of the computer that you are using it. These hard drives do not have any sleep timer setting. But you can adjust this for your computer. You can go to “power options” in you control panel.

3

That is incorrect, please research the answer more thoroughly. Each and every HDD mfg today has an internal power-down timer as part of the APM specification.

4

Hello,

The information I have posted above was about Sleep Time.

These drives will typically spin down after about 10 minutes of inactivity.  There is an utility that modifies the time that your drive will wait prior to spinning down.

Check the links below for more information:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=305&sid=154&lang=en

We recommend backing up your data prior to running this file.

5

Running the utility does not modify the time the drive waits to power down. The utility disables the timer entirely. These are two different things.

Running the utility changed the timer on one of my older Elements SE portable 500GB (WDBABV5000ABK-00) to something like 20-30 minutes (I have not used a stopwatch to time it yet), which is a huge improvement over the incredibly ridiculous 10 seconds.

I personally believe that disks used in the home/portable environment should have a 10-30 minute timeout period.

6

HDKnows, you are wrong and you’re not going to get any points when you keep soliciting for them :) 

modern harddrive all have inbuilt spin down timers, which are controllable from the WD utilities.

7

I still have not received a correct answer to my original question:

“What is the spindown time (how long does it take to go into power-saving spindown mode) for the WD 2TB Elements Portable USB 3.0 HDD (WDBU6Y0020BBK-NESN) ?”

A response using the word “typically”, in the context of this discussion, implies there are variations on what the spindown time could be.

Do WD people not comprehend what is being asked??? How else should I state my question?

Furthermore, the information in http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=305&sid=154&lang=en says the timer becomes disabled. That is also incorrect information. The utility changes the timer from 9 seconds to 30 minutes. This does make the disk more user friendly.