External Hard Drive Power Management Question ??

[Guest]

I have a laptop with win xp pro installed and an external hard drive
connected via usb.
I only use this hard drive to ghost images of my laptop drive. This action
only occurs a couple times a week.

Is there a way to leave the external drive powered on all the time but have
XP keep it in sleep or powered off mode, except when the ghost backup
operation occurs ?

 

[R. McCarty]

First consideration is the USB Hub channel it resides on. You'll need
to have the option for Power Management enabled "Allow Windows
to turn off this device...".

However, the disk would only enter a low power state when the PC
idles to the disk spin down timer. I don't believe USB power savings
works outside the traditional power schemes in XP.

I have a Maxtor 5000LE, that I use occasionally. I keep it on my
desk where the power plug is accessible. For some reason, the drive
has no On/Off-Power switch on it. So I just reach around and plug it
up when needed. You may have to do the same. I would still check
the documentation on the drive and see what Pwr. Management
support it has.

 

[Richard Urban]

Not possible, unless the functionality is built into the drive enclosure. I
don't know of any that are.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!