Can't stop Western Digital RE drives from spinning down

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Maxell-UD

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Hi Folks, just recently got a new custom build for my internet radio station / office. With it are four Western Digital RE (entreprise) hard drives. The C drive being 500 Gig, and the D E and F being 2 TB.

For the last few months I've been looking for info on how to stop the drives from spinning down, and always get the same (look in your power settings) answer. I've done such, and have made the relevant changes; turning all power down options to "off" or "never). Despite this, my hard drives still spin down.

Digging further, I found that WD does have a tool called WDIDLE, but apparently it's only for use with certain drives (reds and greens).

So in the end, does anyone know how to stop WD's Entreprise (RE) drives from spinning down?

Operating System:
Windows 7 Professional 64 SP1

Case:
Silverstone Temjin Series TJ08B-E

Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA B150M D3H

Processor:
Intel i7 6700

Hard Drives:
C: WDC WD5003ABYZ-011FA0 (SATA)
D: WDC WD2004FBYZ-01YCBB1 (SATA)
E: WDC WD2004FBYZ-01YCBB1 (SATA)
F: WDC WD2004FBYZ-01YCBB1 (SATA)

Blu Ray Burner:
Pioneer BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray burner

DVD Burner:
ASUS DRW-24D3ST Black 24x DVD-RW Write
 

Ericloewe

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REs spinning down? That's unusual. Wdidle is unlikely to help you, unfortunately, since it's meant for Greens/Reds/Purples/New Blues.

Any chance you can try a different OS to see what happens? Are there any weird drivers involved?
 

Maxell-UD

Cadet
Joined
Oct 26, 2016
Messages
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REs spinning down? That's unusual. Wdidle is unlikely to help you, unfortunately, since it's meant for Greens/Reds/Purples/New Blues. Any chance you can try a different OS to see what happens?

I prefer not to, as all my purchased software and files are in Windows format. Radio station software mainly seems to be made for windows unfortunately.

Are there any weird drivers involved?

Can't find any drivers, but through the Western Digital diagnostic facility I was able to get the firmware versions. I'll look into updating the firmware, and failing that will ask (again) at the Western Digital forums.

C: WDC WD5003ABYZ-011FA0 (SATA) Firmware 01.01503
D: WDC WD2004FBYZ-01YCBB1 (SATA) Firmware RR03
E: WDC WD2004FBYZ-01YCBB1 (SATA) Firmware RR03
F: WDC WD2004FBYZ-01YCBB1 (SATA) Firmware RR03
 
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Mar 22, 2016
Messages
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Weird question, but since this is windows have you change the power function to "high performance" or what ever it is called in Win 7? If it's in balanced or power saver mode it will spin the drives down.
 

Maxell-UD

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Oct 26, 2016
Messages
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Weird question, but since this is windows have you change the power function to "high performance" or what ever it is called in Win 7? If it's in balanced or power saver mode it will spin the drives down.

Okay, as this is annoying the hell out of me, I fiddled around with this last night for a few hours, and got to the bottom of what was going on.

Under previous windows systems, you would change the power settings and after applying, they would stick. When setting a custom scheme this time, I noticed that the ability to save the scheme was grayed out.

Powersettings02.jpg


Powersettings01.jpg

I thought since the changes were applied, I could just hit the "X" in the upper right corner to close the power setting window. Apparently in reality, this just restores the settings back to how they were before. So despite setting the Hard Drive not to spin down, hitting the "X" would turn the setting back to spinning down drives after 20 minutes.

So understanding what is now going on, one can no longer setup custom power schemes in Windows 7, one has to make do with the pre installed schemes.

So anyway, selected maximum performance and this seems to have done the trick............ for now at least anyway.

Thanks for the heads up on this. :)
 
Joined
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Messages
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Have you tried logging in as an Admin? If not you can use the default Windows Admin log in to see if it will let you apply the changes. I forgot the exact procedure for Win7 but I assume there's a youtube video out there some where.
 
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