Make WD My Book Essential stay on constantly

**Ebisoba** · June 1st, 2007, 02:33 PM

Hello is there a way to make the external hard drive stay on all the time? Thanks.

**osprey4** · June 1st, 2007, 03:03 PM

I thought they only turn off when the system turns off.

**paul9** · June 1st, 2007, 05:12 PM

If it is a laptop, then you generally need to run on mains power to stop the power saving features from activating.

**Ebisoba** · June 1st, 2007, 07:31 PM

No it goes into standby mode if there no activity on the external drive for around 20 minutes. It's a little annoying because it takes about 3 seconds to come out of it and my system freezes during that time. This is for a desktop by the way. It's connected via USB and my power setting is set to never turn off hard drive already.

**DanU** · June 1st, 2007, 07:44 PM

Go to Control Panel >> Power Options. You should see the hard drive power down options there.

**osprey4** · June 1st, 2007, 08:01 PM

I don't believe there is an option to disable the automatic power-down.

**duffieldj1** · August 4th, 2012, 06:56 AM

To fix the built in sleep feature you have to install the WD software that came pre-loaded on the drive, but if you dont have that you can always download it from WD's website. After you install open the client and click settings then set the sleep setting to never

The software can be found here if you don't already have it...

WD Support / Downloads / My Book / My Book Essential (USB 3.0)

I came across this thread looking for how to make the drive stay on all the time, even when you turn off the computer bc I want to boot my os from it and my bios does not recognize it unless I click the power button on the back of the drive wait a few seconds and then turn on the computer *too much work*, so if that is even possible to do, does anyone know how?