External drive with auto power on/off for doing daily backups?

Plexman · 1 Jun 2009 at 17:51

Hi all,

Are there any external drives out there that you can set to turn on off automatically at set times or in conjunction with backup softtware?

The reason I ask it that I back up my data to an external drive every couple of days but do some times forget. I would like to be able to set it up so it's all automated.

Thanks.

miniyazz · 1 Jun 2009 at 19:19

Get a wall timer, set it to turn on/off at whatever times, schedule backup for those times. Cleverer than that, and you'll probably need special hardware.
For example, you could get a USB circuit board (< £30), and wire in a relay, that could then start the scheduled task by sending a current through the relay, the current could then stop (and HDD turns off) when the scheduled task is complete.

Sasahara · 1 Jun 2009 at 22:32

Seagate FreeAgents go into sleep mode once it has been idle for 15 minutes.
That is basicly turning the hard drive off.

whitecrook · 2 Jun 2009 at 02:24

So do the WD elements. I've used literally dozens on the 500GB ones and they were all really good.