Question 1

Does this have a persistent power button or does it need to be pressed every time it's connected to a PC?

Accepted Answer

There is no button with continuous power supply, so every time it is turned off, it needs to be restarted.

Question 2

What do the lights colors mean?  Purple?  Blue?  Manual does not address this.

Accepted Answer

The product overview mentions a new soft LED status light where the blue light is on when it is energized, and both blue and red lights flicker when it reads and writes data. However, there is no mention of a purple light in the provided information.

Question 3

Does this enclosure spin/power down the drive when windows goes to sleep and/or "Safe Eject" is used?

Accepted Answer

In a word, Yes.  But I don't believe that this has anything to do with the enclosure.  It's the computer that manages that (and there's also a jumper on the drive that can override it to keep the drive from spinning down).

I haven't used one of these enclosures with Windows, only Macs, though I've utilized (and disabled, depending on the drive's function) the "power saving" spin down feature on Windows systems for decades (using other enclosures).  In all such situations, I've only ever used systems settings and drive jumpers to configure this behavior.  It's never involved any enclosure configuration.

This enclosure/drive is one of multiple external drives on the system and isn't the boot drive.  I've noticed that after a period of inactivity (being in screensaver mode for awhile or when the computer has been in constant use for hours but this particular drive hasn't been accessed), the drive spins down, but will then spin up when I access a file on it.  When I "safe eject" it, it spins down but doesn't power off (but can be safely powered off manually).

The "power saving" spin down feature irks me.  But I've been too lazy to re-jumper the drive to spin constantly.  I'll do that when I get around to it.  In my opinion, spinning down and back up causes more wear on the drive than does having it spin constantly.  And the amount of power saved probably wouldn't buy you a cup of coffee in a year's time.

Questions & Answers