External USB hard drive constantly spooling/spinning

[haaammit]

Hi there - I had an old Western Digital 2.5" drive (WD2500BEVT) that I bought a caddy for to use as an external drive.

The caddy has an indicator light - green for powered up and red for hard drive being accessed.

When I plug it in, it immediately goes red (and you can feel the drive spinning) and will remain red for about 15 minutes. It then eventually stops spinning and goes green. If I click the safely remove usb button, it says it's safe to remove, but the light stays red - again for 10/15 minutes. ISFAIK there is nothing accessing the drive.

What's accessing the drive? This is on Win7.

If I plug it into my neighbours XP machine, the red light only comes on when accessing the drive (copying/whatever). As soon as the safely remove usb button is clicked, the light goes green straight away.

I've turned off indexing (I think) for that drive. Any other clues would really be appreciated.

Many thanks - Quink

 

[Pixellated]

Hi Quink,

Check your Power settings in Win7, and have a look to see how it's behaving with hard drives turning off after a certain time. I have mine set to never spin down else my music will take 5 seconds to resume playing if I've had it stopped long enough to warrant the HDD to power down, perhaps the same management is keeping the caddy from thinking Win7 is done with your HDD.