USB drive sleep basics

[enewmen]

Hi all.

I have a DS414 and I need a backup device.
All my old external drives/enclosures never go in sleep/hibernation mode after a few mins of no activity. Simple Power On/Power Off.

MS Windows and NAS/Linux support USB drive sleeping. But how to set this when the drive is too dumb to accept any settings? (dumb can be a good thing).

Is there some simple USB standard that if compliant, the drive will automatically shut down after minutes of no activity connected to any host - then wake-up after a request is made?

Is there any difference between a USB powered device and an AC power device?

Does anyone know of ANY large external drive that does what I describe - except for a full size NAS? Any other ideas?

Thanks!
I think I'm missing something basic.

 

[stevech]

My experiences with USB2, USB3 enclosures for SATA 3.5 in drives.

most do not spin-down due to inactivity. I found one combination of drive and enclosure that does, when used with my NAS (DS212).

I cannot say whether the lack of spin-down is due to the USB-SATA chip in the enclosure or the way the drive and chip interact, or something the NAS software does or doesn't do.

No standards I could find.

I found no better way than trial-and-error. No settings in the NAS.

I do recall that used with MS Windows' drivers, spin-down tended to be more commonplace.

Synology gave me a list of enclosures w/drives that are known to spin-down with their DSM software. But all the vendors were in Asia and are an unknown name here.
So, the Seagate 7200RPM I have in USB3 spins down OK. The enclosure is branded Seagate too, but I think that's just a logo imprint.

 

[enewmen]

Hi.
Thanks for the post!

Please give the list of enclosures w/drives that spin-down. Asia brands are OK - I happen to live in Singapore .

I also checked the Synology list of compatible enclosures, but that list seems outdated and very small.

EDIT:
Found this link. Helps a little
http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/User_Reported_Compatible_External_Enclosures/External_HDDs
and
http://www.georgejopling.com/seagate-stbv2000200/