How to get external hard drives to sleep...

[siratfus]

It's funny that any combination of words that I try to google for information, all search results are for people asking how to prevent windows from putting external hard drives to sleep. I need the opposite help. LOL! You see I use my PC as a PLEX media server, and when not in use, it goes to sleep, but the problem is that my external enclosure which houses 4 hard drives never goes to sleep with the PC. Is this something I can command or configure from windows 7? Or, is this a feature that needs to be built in the enclosure? This is the enclosure I have: http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid-/tr4uplusb.html It has two options to power off. I can set it to power off when my computer powers off, or I can set it to where I have to manually power it off. Nothing in the manual talks about sleep mode. And I've found out that when my PC sleeps, the enclosure and all the hard drive never sleeps. Seems you can only have it ON or OFF.

If it's not possible, then which enclosures do you recommend that would have sleep functions and work great with a media server PC.

Please advise, thank you.

[newpball]

What did Sans Digital support tell you?

[Alice_Phoebe]

you may try these steps if not yet tried:

a. Press Windows key + X and select Device Manager.
b. In Device Manager, under Universal Serial Bus Controllers, double-click on the 1st Root Hub.
c. Go to the Power tab to see if the drive is connected to it. If not, try the next Root Hub. If so, click the Power Management tab. check the box that says: "allow computer to turn off this device to save power".

[siratfus]

No response yet from Sans Digital. But I'm thinking maybe they do sleep, and that it's the enclosure that's simply on?

[Bjs]

An external enclosure will power down drives via windows power management but enclosure remains always on ... its normal

A few idea's for remote device power management can be found here

Search term " Smart Home "

[siratfus]

An external enclosure will power down drives via windows power management but enclosure remains always on ... its normal

A few idea's for remote device power management can be found here

Search term " Smart Home "

Thanks for that link, you read my mind. My next line of questioning was asking whether or not it's wise or safe to plug the enclosure bay into one of those BYE BYE STANDBY outlets. But I like some of the products in the link because you can control with an app. So I guess it's okay to use these products?

[nic2k4]

Use USBdeview to check your device's power management capabilities.