I shouldn't think keeping the drive spinning is a good idea at all! They are not made for continuous use.
And I wouldn't think that it's a drive firmware upgrade issue, though I can't say for sure.
Just so you know, my 1 TB MyBook drive goes to sleep too. My setup sounds like very much what you have, and I have the same OS as well. What I notably *dont* see is the drive waking up except when the backup process accesses it.
Our configurations differ only in that you're accessing the drives via FireWire and I'm accessing via USB 2. Of course, that could make all the difference.
You didn't answer my question on whether you have antivirus software installed. If so, you might see if you can explicitly exclude the backup drives in that.
Also, Vista offers the ability to watch file activity... Open the Task Manager, go to the Performance tab, then click the [ Resource Monitor ] button at the bottom. Perhaps you can see what's accessing the drives directly.
FYI, attached is what I see where you've tried to include your image. Perhaps adding it as an attachment will work better.
I forgot about the Resource Monitor so I checked that just now in response to your comment, this is what I found:
When Bridge opens it does access the autorun\wdlogo.jpg on both of the MyBook drives, which I assume is the reason they spin up when Bridge is launched. It uses the logo in the file browser panel for each of these drives. Removing the folder and logo from the MyBook drives does not stop Bridge from looking ...so I put the folders and logo back.
When PS (32 or 64 bit) opens there is a lot of activity under the Files list in the Resource Monitor but no entries for the MyBook drives! There are a lot of listings for the FNPLicensingService64.exe but all files are shown to be on \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 which should be my boot drive (C), not the MyBook drives. However this activity occurs just before the MyBook drives start spooling up and PS usually just hangs at this point until the MyBook drives are on line.
If PS remains open for a long time the MyBook drives will spin down and go to sleep. Working in PS does not cause them to wake-up again but opening Bridge will cause them to spin up.
The internal drive configurations in my computer are…
1 WD Raptor SATA, 150GB, the system drive
1 WD Raptor SATA, 70GB, the scratch/cache drive for Adobe only
2 Seagate Barracuda 500GB drives, in a RAID 0 configuration, using the Intel/Marvell RAID firmware/Vista drivers
The external drive configurations are…
2 External MyBook drives, both in RAID 1 configuration, one is a 2 TB and the other a 1 TB unit, daisy chained from one IEEE 1394b (800 MB) port on a PCIe card.
The MyBook drives cannot be ‘removed’ via either the system, the WD utility or the button on the back of the MyBook drives –any of these result in a message that the drives cannot be disconnected because some running application is using them –must be a system app or the WD utility because nothing else is using them! The only way to take them off line is to restart the system and use the shutdown button during the bios boot sequence.
I have stopped using the little service I wrote as it seems the MyBook drives really use their buffers to hold both incoming and outgoing data without spinning up the drives if possible. Saving a small text file to the drives does not always cause them to spin up nor does the activity seem to reset the awake timer to keep then spinning.
To say the least this is driving me crazy.
BTW: I can't see the graphic you put in your last post.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Talked with a ‘real’ WD technician this morning, the upshot was…
1) Do not run the WD Button Manager except to check the health of the drives from time to time. This app was preventing the drives from being ‘safely removed’
2) Shut the drives down in the AM with the button on the back of the MyBook drives, works like it should with the Button Manager process shut down, no need to reboot Vista.
3) Turn the drives on at night so the scheduled backups can be made.
Not quite the elegant solution I was looking for. If the drives are not shut down, even with the Button Manager process shut down, launching PS will cause the drives to spin up. In this situation the PS launch is rapid and does not wait for the drives to spin up –but they do spin up, which is unnecessary ware and tear.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
The procedure I outlined only worked for about a week. I now have to restart the computer before the button on the back of the MyBook will shut it down, the Vista Safely Remove option just says it can’t shut them down because they are in use by another application.
I called WD again but support person (who could barely speak English) just pointed me to a couple of items where Microsoft acknowledged a problem with Vista and the MyBook drives that they were going to fix. However the issues I have with the MyBook drives are not the ones MS is going to fix. I’m sure the problem is with the MyBook drives. I have discovered that there is actually a lot of chatter on the web going back about a year regarding the issues I've outline here …so I guess WD is not going to fix the problem with their ‘green’ drives.
An Example...
This behavior cannot be called a Vista issue: If a Start>Shut Down is initiated Vista will actually turn the MyBook drives off during the shutdown but once the computer has powered off the MyBook drives start up again on their own and run continuously. The button on the drives does not shut them off; instead it causes the lighted oval to completely light up. The only way to shut them down is to pull the plug. That is not behavior I would call ‘expected’.
I love the two WD Raptor drives I have but these WD Green MyBook drives ...
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Linear Mode
