Can a USB external HDD be spun down?

[squelch41]

Hi,

I was wondering if there is a way of spinning down an external USB HDD
in windows 2000 when inactivein the same way that an internal HDD can
be?

I used to have a firewire/USB enclosure that did this in firewire but
not usb.

Have just replaced it with an akansa box.

Any ideas how I could achieve this? Would save power, heat, and
improve disk longevity!

Thanks
squelch41

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi,

I was wondering if there is a way of spinning down an external USB HDD
in windows 2000 when inactivein the same way that an internal HDD can
be?

I used to have a firewire/USB enclosure that did this in firewire but
not usb.

Have just replaced it with an akansa box.

Any ideas how I could achieve this? Would save power, heat, and
improve disk longevity!

It cannot be done. The required command simply cannot be sent
over USB in any standardized way.

The only thing that might be possible is to have the disk spin itself
down if inactive for some time. In order to set this (if the disk
supports it), it has to be directly connected via (A)ATA and some HDD
feature tool has to be used to make the changes.

Arno

 

[Eric Gisin]

It can be done in principle with the SCSI spin-down command,
but no SCSI utility for Windows sees USB drives. [it is a trivial Win32 application ...]

It cannot be done. The required command simply cannot be sent
over USB in any standardized way.

More clueless advice from the resident idiot.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

It cannot be done.

Of course it can, for the same reason that you (don't) say it cannot.
If it can be done for firewire then obviously it can be done with USB too.

Whether it works depends on how much of the SCSI command set has
been implemented in the bridge device.

The required command simply cannot be sent over USB in any standardized way.

Yes it can, clueless babblebot.

The only thing that might be possible is to have the disk spin itself
down if inactive for some time. In order to set this (if the disk
supports it), it has to be directly connected via (A)ATA

and some HDD feature tool

Such as there is?