USB drives never spin down SER8 8745HS

drunken_prozac

I have been all over the web and reddit but all I can find is the opposite of what I’m looking for.

TL:DR
I need my external HDD’s to spin down and the SER8 is keeping them spinning unless I pull the USB cable out.

I have been hunting and trying everything I can find but I’ve almost lost the very little hair I have left.

I had a Haydes Canyon NUC for many years with external USB drives attached for movies/tv shows, this is a mix of Seagate and WD.
These drives are only needed when I want to watch something or add to them and for the past 6 years these drives spin up, serve me my media then after I’m finished they spin down, nice and quiet in my TV cabinet.

Well my NUC decided to go go to the big electronic scrapyard in the sky so I got myself a new Beelink SER8 8745HS. Speedy and quiet, perfect for what I need!
It came with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed with no extras or bloatware, plugged my external drives in and configured the same as before, only this time the drives never spin down.
I have tried device manager and right clicking to check all sleep on usb is enabled (as its removed from power options in 11) I’ve downloaded all WD/Seagate software to push 5 minute sleep, I’ve tried regedit after regedit from my limited google-fu but still no luck.
I disabled SuperFetch SysMain.
The drives are being ‘used’, as there is no head movement, they are all just spinning.

I have looked in the Bios in the hidden menus and disabled everything I can think of, I have checked no new updates for windows.
Even if I go to disk manager and right click and set the drive to ‘offline’ they are still spinning with no read or write data at all!

I have run ProcessMonitor and can see a couple of odd things accessing the drive every 5 or so minutes.
MSMPEng.exe PID 5672 IRP_MJ_Create (and related processes)
Explorer.exe PID 4

I never had this issue on my old PC with the same drives attached and that was also updated to Windows 11.

Does anyone have any idea what I could try next as I don’t really want a physical switch to turn the drives off as the family use it as the home media server in the lounge.
I just need the drives to spin down like they did before but the SER8 just keeps them spinning and doesn’t allow them to sleep.

Thanks

Darren

support10

drunken_prozac

Hello there,

Could you please send us a picture of SN code at the bottom of machine ?

Here are some solutions:

Exclude Drives from Microsoft Defender Scans
Action: Add your external drives to Microsoft Defender’s exclusions to prevent periodic scans.

Steps:

Open Windows Security → Virus & threat protection.

Under Manage settings, click Exclusions → Add or remove exclusions.

Add each external drive as a folder exclusion.

Adjust Disk Timeout via Powercfg
Action: Force Windows to spin down disks after a shorter idle period.

Steps:

Open Command Prompt as Admin.

Run:

cmd

powercfg /setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442 6738e2c4-e8a5-4a42-b16a-e040e769756e 5
(Sets disk idle timeout to 5 minutes; adjust the last number as needed.)

Disable Background Services
Windows Search/Indexing:

Open Services (services.msc).

Disable Windows Search.

SysMain (SuperFetch):

Confirm it’s already disabled via Services.

USB Power Management & BIOS Check
USB Selective Suspend:

In Power Options → Change plan settings → Change advanced settings.

Ensure USB selective suspend is Enabled under both battery and plugged in.

5.Hardware Workarounds
USB Hub with Switch: Use a powered hub with individual switches to manually power down drives without unplugging.

Scheduled Task Script: Create a script (e.g., via PowerShell) to eject drives after inactivity, though this may require remounting

Have a nice day!