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External Hard Drives Ignoring “Turn off Hard Disk After” Setting – Mixed

Tags: Windows

I have two laptops (Windows 10) and a mini-PC (Windows 11) with external USB hard drives connected. The “Turn off hard disk after” setting is set to 10 minutes on all devices, but the drives turn off at different times on each machine. One shuts off around 2 minutes, another at 3, another at 6, and during RDP sessions, it’s even shorter (one of them even turns off HDDs after 5 seconds which was driving me crazy). I’m using the same Hard Drives to test individually on each PC.
It seems like the timer is only respected if it’s below an unknown max limit that varies per PC (if I set to it to 1 min it will turn off after 1 min). Anyone knows how to resolve this issue?

Win 11 23H2
Win 10 22H2
Win 10 21H2

Topic

Yes.

In reply to External Hard Drives Ignoring “Turn off Hard Disk After” Setting – Mixed

It’s a complaint that’s been posted about for over a decade. I’ve yet to see Microsoft issue a solid fix.

File a bug report with Microsoft.

Any solution?

In reply to Yes.

I was using a program called BlueIris (video security software), and it seems that it prevents windows from turning off HDDs without accessing them (read/write). I’m wondering if there’s a similar program that it was build specifically for preventing windows from turning off HDDs? That’s really unbelievable how Microsoft is leaving such a bug without a fix.

Apps that access said drives.

In reply to Any solution?

Reset the turn off timer. That’s not a bug.

[Author]

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