No power save on external hard drive - How to implement?

Posted by blastawaythewall on Super User See other posts from Super User or by blastawaythewall
Published on 2010-01-22T08:35:48Z Indexed on 2010/03/30 12:03 UTC
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I recently bought a new 3.5" USB external hard drive which I thought had a power save feature on it, but it turns out that it doesn't. So whether it's being used or not, it spins, which wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't so loud and didn't get really really hot. After doing some research, it seems like what controls this is the enclosure of the hard drive and not the drive itself or the OS (although I suspect that's not entirely true). I attempted to use the "hdparm" utility but it couldn't identify my externals.

Just to be clear, I'm defining power save as a hard drive spinning down after a certain time period of not being used (read from/written to). Also, I have other externals that do this, so it's not a problem from my computer.

Here's my question: Is there a way to implement a power save-like feature on my hard drive through software, OS settings, or anything else?

Here's some details:
Running: Windows XP Home SP2
HD Model: Cavalry CAUM-B-OTB 2TB (although the website only lists 1TB max)
Inside: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 (HDS722020ALA330) (I would link, but new users can only post 1)

Thanks in advance.

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