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How to get an external hd to powerdown with laptop?

post #1 of 8
8/24/06 at 1:52pm
Thread Starter 
I have an AMS venus enclosure with a 320wd 16mb 7200rpm internal hd and I wanted to know how to get it to power down with my laptop if possible...is there any software? or feature with quickset to control this action through the usb which the hd is connected to...?
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post #2 of 8
8/24/06 at 2:07pm
no the power circuit is only controllable by the physical switch on the enclosure, unless such a feature is specifically listed by the manufacturer. i think only high end enclosures with multiple drives would have a feature like that, although sometimes I wish mine did.
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post #3 of 8
8/25/06 at 2:40am
Use the 5v power from the USB to trigger a relay that switches power to the HDD.
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post #4 of 8
8/25/06 at 3:17am
y not just turn it off manually?
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post #5 of 8
8/25/06 at 3:28am
buy an enclosure with an oxford 911 chipset... Thats whats in my newer tech ministack (the mac mini lookalike). mine shuts down automatically after shutdown or hibernate (not sure about standby). vantec also sells the same looking enclosure with the same parts...

or just do like i did and buy a ministack.
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post #6 of 8
8/25/06 at 4:00am
If you can sacrifice some space, the smaller external disks using laptop HD's inside them can be powered from the USB hub with 1-2 USB connections. When your laptop powers down, they power down. Both my wife and I have one for backups.
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post #7 of 8
8/25/06 at 11:17am
I use a special power stip that has a master socket that controls the others so my external HDD, speakers, scanner, printer, etc are all turned off when my laptop is turned off or put on standby (the master socket allows a little charge through for standby but as soon as it goes over a threshold, i.e. when you turn it back on, all the other sockets go back to being live).
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post #8 of 8
8/25/06 at 11:23am
There are a few companies that do them but here is an example of what I am taking about:

http://www.oneclickpower.co.uk/productinfo.htm
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