External HD doesn't go into sleep mode anymore

[toniostarcevic]

Hello,

since I've installed Hard Disc Sentinel, my external HD doesn't go into sleep mode anymore.
It's a 4 TB Western Digital Green in an Icy Box housing.
It used to go into sleep mode after 5 minutes. Though it's not bad to have no waitig times anymore in windows explorer,
but I'm not sure if the lifespan isn't decreased drastically if it never goes into sleep mode. I'm not using the drive very much.

I think HD Sentinel's drive check feature is causing this, since it's set to 5 minutes by default.
What would be the proper action? Increasing the check frequency to let's say 20 minutes? But that would cause te drive to go into sleep mode after 5 min and 15 min later
it will spin up again.
Would it be better to keep the check time below the sleep time, rather than to have this 5/15 min stop/spin cycle going all the time?

I think the best option would be to inrease the check frequency only for this drive. I would set it to serveral hours, since I don't use the drive very much.
But I didn't found an option to set the frequency for individual drives. Did I overlook something?
Any suggestions?

[hdsentinel]

Yes, of course, this is completely normal.

Detecting the status information of the hard disks (like any other read command) resets the idle time counter of the hard disk.
So if your hard disk would need 5 minute or more to enter sleep mode and Hard Disk Sentinel checks the status once per every 5 minutes (yes, this is the default setting) then yes, the hard disk will not enter sleep mode at all.

Yes, you may configure the detection frequency at Configuration -> Advanced Options page, but this would affect the detection frequency of all hard disks. No, I can confirm that it's not possible to set custom detection frequency for different drives in the current version, it may be available later.

However, I can confirm that Hard Disk Sentinel automatically detects the power state of the hard disk and if detects that it's sleeping, Hard Disk Sentinel does not "wake up" only just to detect the status information.
For this, you'd only need to increase the detection frequency just above than the sleep timer of the hard disk, so if you select 10 or 30 minutes, the hard disk could spin down.
Please note that this requires the hard disk to provide the power state correctly and accurately. Not all external hard disks do so, some may always respond "I'm spinning", even if it's sleeping...

[toniostarcevic]

I've increased the checking time a bit. It works as you describe. The drive is not woken anymore. Thanks!

[hdsentinel]

Thanks, I'm glad if I could help and things are working now