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USB Enclosure/Drive with Spin Down

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nheather

Occasional Visitor
Hi,

What I would like to do is have an external USB drive that is permanantly connected to a NAS so that the NAS disk can be backed up as a scheduled task.

I don't to to be plugging/unplugging the drive and issuing commands everytime I want to do a backup - just want it to happen in the background.

I have been told that if I buy a ready made portable USB drive then they never spin down - and that is understandable becuse you would only plug them in when you need them.

So I am quite prepared to buy an enclosure, with a mains adaptor and fit a retail hard disk.

But will that work - are there any combinations that will spin down.

And what determines the spin down - the disk, the enclosure or the computer/NAS that it is connected to.

Many thanks,

Nigel
 
Hi,

What I would like to do is have an external USB drive that is permanantly connected to a NAS so that the NAS disk can be backed up as a scheduled task.

I don't to to be plugging/unplugging the drive and issuing commands everytime I want to do a backup - just want it to happen in the background.

I have been told that if I buy a ready made portable USB drive then they never spin down - and that is understandable becuse you would only plug them in when you need them.

So I am quite prepared to buy an enclosure, with a mains adaptor and fit a retail hard disk.

But will that work - are there any combinations that will spin down.

And what determines the spin down - the disk, the enclosure or the computer/NAS that it is connected to.

Many thanks,

Nigel
I have the same question, but can add a little experience.

I just put a spare 2.5" 5ooGB drive in a USB 3 enclosure and attached it to my QNAP TS120 NAS to backup some files. It never spun down so I disconnected it. Later I plan to try the same thing with a spare 3.5" USB drive just to see if it works better. The latter drive had no problem spinning down when it was attached to an old Asus router a couple of years ago. I probably won't get around to it for a while, so news from others will be appreciated.
 
Rosewill made (makes?) a USB enclosure that would spin down the drive after a few minutes of inactivity. Mine lasted about a year connected to a Windows machine with a WD 1TB Green.
 
Do you mean it broke after a year or you stop using it after a year.

Cheers,

Nigel
Sorry, I should have been more clear. The enclosure broke. As I recall (this was a few years ago), when it started to go bad, Windows would have trouble detecting the drive, which I could fix by unplugging, power-cycling, and replugging the enclosure. Then it would disappear after spin-down. Changing cables and ports had no effect. Eventually I moved the hard drive into the Window's machine, where it's still working fine to this day.
 
I tried several 3.5 in. drives in several enclosures, with my NAS. Some did a spin-down, some not. I think it requires the right drive firmware and the right chipset in the enclosure's USB interface.

It's all unpredictable.

Windows' drivers seem to cause a larger percentage of USB enclosures to spin-down from inactivity, as compared to the Linux drivers in the NAS.

I have a 2.5 in. 2TB drive in a USB3 enclosure. Seagate (take-a-chance, on sale). I plug it in to the NAS only once a week or so to bake the external safety backup (incremental). The primary backup is volume 2 of my NAS, backing volume 1. Previously I used a 3.5 in. USB3. But the smaller 2.5 in. enclosure, USB3 powered, is so easy to hide, and easy to grab and go if need be.
 
Some USB Drives - spin down is controlled by firmware in the USB-PATA controller, I've got a couple (older WD and a Maxtor One Touch)

The spindown on those is governed by lack of activity on the USB bus - which is OS dependent.

Others, they might be OS governed, and there I haven't had much luck...
 

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