Disabling power management on WD My Passport USB HDD

[tewill]

I've read a number of posts that discouraged the use of Western Digital external USB HDDs because their power management functionality would interfere with backup or other time-intensive file transfers. I haven't found many posts updating this finding to reflect the current situation with such drives, so wanted to report that I just purchased a WD My Passport 1 TB external USB HDD, and was able to easily disable power management using the included "WD Drive Utilities" (which I installed on my Windows machine) by selecting "Never" for the Sleep Timer. I was then able to successfully backup my entire ReadyNAS Duo to this USB drive.

[HPCHelp]

Hi - I am newbie here. It looks like a very useful forum for NetGear RAS users.

I have been having this problem, can anybody confirm whether this suggestion should work with older WD Passport drives (I am trying to work with a part number WD1800MER-00 1109A - I think, could be 1600 instead of 1800) - any particular version of the WD config software I should use?

Also I have read that there was an auto dismount of the drive after backup issue that was apparently fixed with a firmware upgrade to the NAS Duo - any thoughts on upgrading the NAS firmware? And warnings on any firmware versions if I upgrade to fix this secondary problem?

This is not my own equipment I am just trying to help out a local organization.

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[tewill]

I've read that the Western Digital "SmartWare" software can be used to disable power management on other WD external USB HDDs. You can check the WD support site to see what software is available to download for your model: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp

[HPCHelp]

Thanks.

It appears not for the older WD devices. I have now trawled the WD community forum - and they came in for a lot of stick for this problem on the earlier devices where the 'powersave' is fixed 'feature' that cannot be configured.