Issue
Many people, especially university students who store games on mechanical hard drives, face environmental constraints that force them to use laptops. As a result, they have to use external hard drive enclosures to connect 3.5-inch mechanical hard drives.
However, in this setup, the main controller of the hard drive enclosure usually comes with a sleep mechanism for mechanical hard drives. After connecting the hard drive, if you don’t use it for a few minutes, the enclosure will put the hard drive into sleep mode, slowing down its rotation and entering an idle state. When you press Win+E to open File Explorer and navigate to "This PC," you’ll notice that the File Explorer keeps loading, and the idle hard drive starts to speed up. The computer will wait for the mechanical hard drive to load before displaying all drive letters in File Explorer. Repeating this process frequently can become quite frustrating, as you're just waiting for the idling hard drive.
Solution
I found a project on GitHub that can solve this issue by preventing external mechanical hard drives from entering sleep mode.
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Project link:
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Software release page:
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Software usage instructions: After installing the software, open it, click
Add Drive, and then select your external mechanical hard drive.You can also use it with external solid-state drives, as some SSD enclosures also have sleep mechanisms, which could increase the SMART power-on count of the SSD, potentially reducing its lifespan.
