External HDD hangs system

Hello all!
I am using B&R home 10 with two scripts that are scheduled to run automatically.
The first script runs on Sundays and creates a full backup.
the second script runs Mon thru Sat and creates differential backups, and saves each day to it's own sub directory. (I am using the method described in the Custom cyclic backup tutorial paper, and it works GREAT!!!).
HOWEVER....
I am backing up to a USB western digital passport drive (500gb) with ~250 Gb free, and the images are only about 30 gig in size, so no size problems...
BUT...
On two occasions, the backup started, but hung my machine, and the USB drive was still in sleep mode (light slowly blinking on drive).
I don't know if the drive came out of sleep, but B&R had hung my machine (had to push the reset button).
Are there problems with drives (USB in particular) if they do NOT come out of sleep, the program will actually hang the machine?
There were no errors reported in event viewer, and the B&R log only showed the virtual job completing, and NO committed job even starting (or logged).
Is this a problem with B&R or my drive?
Thanks!!!

 

It appears that B&R should 'wake up' the drive, but it fails. I don't think that the issue is related to B&R, but to drive.
You can schedule something simple (like open external drive to browse) a few minutes before running backup. It should help.

 

Hello Mech An!
thanks for the reply!
Yes, that is what I thought it was.
I also had the idea to run a simple task using B&R's command scheduler, just to make sure the drive is awake.
If that doesn't work, I will use windows scheduler to open the drive.
Only problem is that it rarely happens, so it might take a while to troubleshoot.
I posted my question also to see if others are using the same drive, and have had similar problems, and what they did/find.
I do appreciate your ideas and will implement them!
Thanks again!