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I've searched the web high and low and have not been able to find a 'published' technique for keeping a 'My Book' hard drive from spinning down. Some people want to turn off this feature to ensure 'fast access' to their drive, but the feature is built in to the drive and there aren't any software solutions that I'm aware of. I've also had problems when copying large files that take an excess of 10 minutes where the drive will spin down, the files won't get copied and it prevents me from shutting down my computer. I get an error, "Windows is currently working with a file...".
The solution is to keep the My Book hard drive awake. By default it shuts down every 10 minutes. So here's the work around: set up a system to automatically save a very small file to the drive every 8 minutes. You can set this up with no additional software and have it run seamlessly in the background 'invisible' to the user. Here's how:
- CREATE A SMALL FILE THAT WILL GET BACKED UP EVERY EIGHT MINUTES.
Open Notepad by going to 'Start', 'Programs', 'Accessories', 'Notepad'. In the open document type in the text, "This file will help keep My Book awake.". Then save this file as 'stayawake.txt' in the root of your C:\ drive. This will create a 1 kb document.
- CREATE A BATCH FILE THAT WILL BACK UP YOUR FILE.
Now that you have your file, you need to create a batch file that will back it up to the My Book drive. This is really simple. Open a new Notepad document by going to 'Start', 'Programs', 'Accessories', 'Notepad'. Now on the first line, type in
"xcopy c:\stayawake.txt z:\stayawake.txt /u /y"
On the second line, type in
"Exit"
Do not use the quotes when you copy this text. Make sure the z:\ drive is the path to your My Book drive. The /u specifies "Updates the files that already exist in destination.". The /y specifies, "Overwrites existing files without prompting". Now save this Notepad document with a ".bat" extension. Any name will work, I recommend using the name "Mybooknospin.bat". Save it in C:\ root directory.
- TEST THE BATCH FILE
Now that you have the batch file that will copy the text file, open up the My Book directory and double click on the "Mybooknospin.bat" in the C:\ root directory. If the batch file works, it should copy the file to the My Book root directory. If it doesn't work, make a new batch file and be sure the commands are typed correctly and that the drive letters are correct. Retest and repeat until it works.
- CREATE A NEW COMPUTER USER
When you tested the batch file you probably noticed that a DOS window popped up for a split second. This window popping up every eight minutes will drive you crazy, so you will want to run the batch file 'hidden', and to do that you will run it as a different user than the user logged on. So let's create a new user. Go to 'Start', 'Settings', 'Control Panel', 'User Accounts'. Click 'Create a new account'. Type in 'Hidden' for the user account name. click 'Next'. Then make sure that the user 'Hidden' is set up as an Administrator and click 'Create Account'. Click the 'Hidden' user account and then set a password to protect access to it.
- SET UP THE 8 MINUTE INVISIBLE BACKUP OF YOUR TEXT FILE USING TASK SCHEDULER
The last step in this setup is to set up task scheduler to run the backup every eight mintues. To do this, go to 'Start', 'Programs', 'Accessories', 'System Tools', 'Scheduled Tasks'. Double click 'Add a Sheduled Task', click Next (this may pause for a minute here), click Browse and select your batch file "Mybooknospin.bat". click 'Daily', then Next. Click 'Every Day', click next. Change the user name to 'Hidden' and enter the password twice, click Next. Choose 'Open Advanced Properties...' click Finish. Under 'Schedule' click 'Advanced'. Click 'Repeat task every' and set the value to 8 minutes. Click 'OK' and 'OK' and re-enter user name and password twice. Now in the window 'Sheduled Tasks' you should see your task. Go to your My Book root drive and delete the file to be copied. Right click on the scheduled task in the task scheduler and click 'run'. If it works, the file should be re-created on your My Book drive, and it should copy in the background, totally invisible to the current user. This set up will now re-copy the file to the My Book drive every 8 minutes and keep it awake!
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