Ext HDD (USB) power save

[Sesshi]

I was watching a DL.TV podcast and it was referenced (not by the presenters but by some apparent Mac Fanatics in the production team) that Macs could power down external disks to standby mode when the disk was not in use. This is something I've never seen. It's something I'd like to see. How do I go about sleeping an external USB disk?

 

[simontarr]

I was watching a DL.TV podcast and it was referenced (not by the presenters but by some apparent Mac Fanatics in the production team) that Macs could power down external disks to standby mode when the disk was not in use. This is something I've never seen. It's something I'd like to see. How do I go about sleeping an external USB disk?

I thought most powered down automatically. I know the 2 different HDDs I've had just power down on their own on both Mac & Windows. I think its the hard drive itself that does the powering down- not software on the mac, but I could be wrong.

 

[crashlock]

I have a Western Digi ProBook 250GB running with Firewire 800. It seems to just power down to standby all on it's own after a few minutes of no use.

 

[cschreppel]

Yeah, I've had the same happen to my drives. They just idle after awhile and then stop spinning after that. They'll kick up the second you click on the drive though.