as Seagate freeagent (some other models) owners have found when you shutdown the wii and then power up the drive powers on but doesnt wake and you get an error (no drive detected) so far ive found by having wiiconnect enabled the wii can go into standby and the drive stayes powered ready for you to play from on next power up.
alternativly you could cut the power from the usb cable and power that from another and add a power from another source.
not sure if this would work but maybe feeding it from a powered hub would also stop the drive going into standby
alternativly you could cut the power from the usb cable and power that from another and add a power from another source.
not sure if this would work but maybe feeding it from a powered hub would also stop the drive going into standby