External HDD still spins when laptop is on standby

[cazetoG]

Hi.

As the title says, my Western Digital Elements 2TB 3.0 USB drive doesn't power off when my laptop has the lid closed.

I've notest that the drive has a standby option when it's not used, it just blink's every few seconds, but for some reason the drive wake up and stay active when I close the lid on the PC - and I don't have any special files on the drive that windows need to get to.
I've looked trough the power management, and I can't seem to find anything that will help me here.

I'm running on windows 8.1

Cheers

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there cazetoG,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your drive. 🙁

You can go to your advanced power settings -> Power buttons and lid -> set you laptop to sleep and see whether the issue persists.

Apart from that, I guess you can use some tool to see what is accessing the HDD(antivirus program for example).
Thread on that: http://superuser.com/questions/455063/how-to-find-out-which-process-is-using-an-external-usb-drive

I guess you can test your drive with WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool as well: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=c3HFRk
In case there is something wrong with it, you need to back up the data stored on it.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[cazetoG]

Hi there cazetoG,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your drive. 🙁

You can go to your advanced power settings -> Power buttons and lid -> set you laptop to sleep and see whether the issue persists.

Apart from that, I guess you can use some tool to see what is accessing the HDD(antivirus program for example).
Thread on that: http://superuser.com/questions/455063/how-to-find-out-which-process-is-using-an-external-usb-drive

I guess you can test your drive with WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool as well: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=c3HFRk
In case there is something wrong with it, you need to back up the data stored on it.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

Just went into power management and saw the options they're both set on standby, well everything under that category is set to standby, and that's a good thing I suppose?
It might be the virus program that's holding the drive active, i'm not sure - I'll have to check up on that, and also the WD program as well, but it seems like the solution is fairly simple, but I guess not, thanks for the help - I'll be back