Hardware WD My Book Essential Spin Down Problem

[fkbsar]

When I decided to use my Essential for backups I formatted the drive to FAT32 and loaded up my backups. So therefore I don't have the Smartware software on the drive anymore. Last night I hooked up the Essential to my laptop (Vista) and backed up some games, unmounted the drive using the little USB icon and plugged the drive back into the Wii. This is the first time that's I've actually unmounted the drive using the icon. I then loaded Wiiflow and noticed that the game had no cover and tried to obtain the cover - which I have done with success numerous times on other games - but this time without success. The progress bar froze on numerous attempts. Here is what I've noticed that was different...the blue light on the HDD is now scrolling periodically - after reading and searching around it seems that Vista has turned on the spin down (power save). I guess that happened when I unmounted the drive properly.

It never blinked before unless it was reading or writing. Question is can I download the Smartware from WD install it and turn off the power save? And if so how? Could this be what is interrupting the downloading of the covers. Sorry for all the noob questions but I appreciate your time and effort.

 

[Donkey Plonk]

You haven't removed smartware at all. Formatting the drive does not remove the smartware. In fact, I don't believe you can remove it as I'm pretty sure its written in the firmware.

Anyway, its not that smartware is installed, its that there is a power save mode and you need to turn it off in smartware.
Download it, run it, it'll pick your drive up, last tab in the program is for power save. Simply turn it off. problem solved mate, don't worry, I have the same drive

 

[fkbsar]

Thank you so much for your help. I just downloaded the Smartware software and will install it and turn it off tonight. Thanks again.