Computer Guru's, Does my external Hard Drive go to sleep if its still blinking?

@ozzy seems like unplugging and plugging back in for playback sessions would be the same as spinning down and spinning up for playback sessions, and therefore not reduce any risk if your concern is with mechanical degradation causing a failure. Keeping the disk spinning non-stop is the way to avoid that (only to suddenly be surprised by a head crash the first time you spin down and back up).

Unless what you're seeing is that even when the Lumin is sleeping, the hard disk is constantly spinning down and up again.

I guess I probably wouldn't worry about it too much, especially if you have a backup. I'm not sure there is any hard data on what sort of sleep/idle vs. spin duty cycle is optimal but hard drive controllers and disks should handle music playing activity cycles very well. Also don't let it get too hot.

The hard disk "enclosure" LED will usually stay on or blink to indicate it is receiving power although the drive itself may have been spun down. You might want to check the enclosure manual to see if they have anything listed for the LED as a status indicator.

It sounds like you're worried about the drives spinning down and then locking up or crashing when they spin up, if this happens often and the drive starts to age (or is relatively new and untested). I'd definitely recommend having a backup of the music. Using a NAS with RAID is another option that would be statistically safer. You could also consider using SSD drives.

@ozzy I think the only way to be sure what the blinking LED means is to find out from the enclosure manual or manufacturer. Sometimes it means data is being read/written, but it could mean sleep mode with the drives spun down. The LED might also be multi-color, to indicate the differences.

You should still maintain a backup somewhere for safety.