Prevent External Hard Drives From Entering Sleep Mode

Some external hard drives make use of a hard coded sleep mode that kicks in after some time of inactivity, usually between 10-15 minutes. The external hard drive will enter sleep mode and initiate a wake up when new data is requested of the drive. This can be problematic in some circumstances where the user does not want this to happen or where the drive has troubles waking up again.

The developer of No Sleep has created a simple program that writes a blank text file every x minutes to the external hard drive effectively preventing it from entering sleep mode. The same can be done with a simple batch file or Autohotkey program but No Sleep is a solution for users without the knowledge to create a program of their own.

The software program is portable and comes with a graphical user interface that can be used to configure some of the program’s settings. The gui can be used to select the external hard drive that should be prevented from going into sleep mode and to define the write interval of the blank text file.

The interval can be set between 1 and 15 minutes. NoSleep mode can then be started with the click of a button. It is furthermore possible to place the software program in the Windows system tray to make it as unobtrusive as possible.

No Sleep should work on all versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system and with all kinds of hard drives that are connected to the computer system.

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Tags: external drive, external hard drive, no sleep, portable software, prevent sleep mode, sleep mode, software, vista sleep mode, windows software
Categories: Windows, software

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8 Responses to “Prevent External Hard Drives From Entering Sleep Mode”

1. Akeem says:

   March 3, 2009 at 2:56 pm

   I would be interested if a program could make my external hard drives go to sleep.
   I find it very hard to find these drives with hard coded sleep modes; often it is not mentioned in the description.

   Reply
2. Dan says:

   March 3, 2009 at 4:45 pm

   I agree with Akeem. It would be very handy to have a utility that would put an external drive to sleep on command (or at xx minute intervals of inactivity).

   I’m especially concerned about those drives that never sleep, even when the computer is powered down. These need to be turned off manually, but I’d prefer them to simply sleep until the PC is powered up again.

   Reply
3. Les Pock says:

   April 2, 2009 at 5:32 pm

   How about for Mac?

   Thanks!

   Reply

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

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   March 4, 2009 at 4:32 am

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