How to setup Windows to not put my external drive to sleep?

Go into the Power Options in Control Panel, then click on "Change Plan Settings" for your plan, then there should be an option "Change advanced power settings", then look under the "Hard Disk" and "USB Settings" areas.

This one may not be the actual answer, but set your "Turn off Hard Disk after" to never (set 0), but I think the real one is to set "USB selective suspend settings" to "disabled" at least when plugged in...but maybe also when on battery if you are using it that way when it happens.

Windows USB are set to be disabled if idle to save power, you can disable this function by going to

• Control Panel
• Device Manager
• Universal Serial Bus controllers (expend this)

You should see a list of Generic USB Hub

Right click on each one of them and select Properties | Power Management and uncheck the Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power

Try this piece of software: NosleepHD: http://nosleephd.codeplex.com/ It writes an empty file every minute.