External HD shuts down automatically

[jasopark 0]

Whenever I use my Retrospect 6.5 External HD for longer than 30 minutes, it automatically shuts down. I don't think it's an issue of over heating because I took care to clear at least 6 inches of space around the storage device. Why does it keep shutting off? Is this a setting or a defect?

[DWitteried 1]

I have the same problem with my WD MyBook, 500GB, USB 2/Firewire/eSata; when I use the eSata connector. The problem seems to occur when the backup is verifying the files. I believe the issue is with the WD drive firmware as I read a post on another site where MS Backup did the same thing. I also tried changing the HD sleep interval in the Power Profile of Windows with no success. I am now trying a utility called KeepAliveHD that writes a small file to the HD periodically. It seems to be working. A nice feature is the utility can do this for multiple HDs.