WMPL reading and overheating my USB HDs

Ro Wood · Dec 22, 2023

Greetings
I have a problem for which I can't find a solution.
Windows Media Player Legacy is Synchronizing my USB HDs without my permission, and these are becoming overheated at temperatures of 50°C according to HD Sentinel.
I don't know what to do to stop Media Player from accessing my discs.
I disabled all system access and the auto-reading of the disks did not help.

Berton · Dec 22, 2023

One thing that may be causing the heat is insufficient power to the drives if they are not self-powered but rely on the USB ports. The USB 3 ports provide more power than USB 2. I have 2 x 4TB External USB drives but they are self-powered and plugged into a self-powered USB 3 Hub, no heat issue seen. I also have a 1TB portable drive plugged into one of the ports, no heat felt.

glasskuter · Dec 22, 2023

Do you get some indication it's Media Player causing the problem and sure it's not the drive being indexed when you plug it in.
I have all my usb drives assigned a persistent drive letter and indexing turned off for each drive.You can try it and see if it makes a difference..
It's best to assign drive letters high up in the alphabet.

Windows Tip: Assign Permanent Letters to Removable Drives

Each time you plug in a USB drive or SD card in a PC, Windows gives it a dynamic alphabetic letter. Here's how to give your drive(s) a permanent letter.

www.groovypost.com

To turn off indexing, right click on a drive. Select properties. Uncheck the box under the general tab to disable indexing for the drive..

Ro Wood · Dec 22, 2023

It's the Media Player, with it uninstalled this problem doesn't happen, the point is that I need it installed for other programs to work correctly, like TotalMedia 3.5, with the media player installed it starts indexing the media files on my hard drives and this The question is how do I stop it?
Not to mention that I need the Media Player installed to stream to my TV.

glasskuter · Dec 22, 2023

Ro Wood said:
The question is how do I stop it?

I told you in post 3.

Ro Wood · Dec 22, 2023

glasskuter said:
I told you in post 3.

Everything you say has been done a long time ago and I've never had this problem.
Some time ago I had to open some WAV files in Windows Media Player Legacy, and after this it started to happen that the external disks were indexed by the Media Player, I have already disabled everything I could to see if this stops, including uninstalling the Media Player and during this period in which it was uninstalled I had no problems, however, as I mentioned above, I had to reinstall the Media Player because not only did some programs no longer work, such as Total Media, which I use to tune my USB TV Receiver, as well as Video Stream. that goes to my conventional TV stopped working, so I had to reinstall it, but with this problem occurring again, I just want to know what I can do to make the Media Player stop accessing the External Units and stop indexing them, these steps being What you tell me doesn't work...

hsehestedt · Dec 22, 2023

Ro Wood said:
these are becoming overheated at temperatures of 50°C according to HD Sentinel

Personally, I wouldn't consider 50°C to be anywhere near overheating, but maybe that's just me.

Ro Wood · Dec 22, 2023

hsehestedt said:
Personally, I wouldn't consider 50°C to be anywhere near overheating, but maybe that's just me.

50° Celsius is when the HD Sentinel triggers all superheating alerts, it was once at 54°C

glasskuter · Dec 23, 2023

I agree with @hsehestedt. I would not consider 50 to be overheating, You do not state the kind of drives you have. For NVME drives most manufacturers recommend temps should not get above 65-70. When a disk is indexing it's working pretty hard, so 50 (or 54)for short periods of time would not concern me. The bigger the capacity, the longer indexing takes so the hotter a drive might get. If your drives are nvme and installed in a usb drive enclosure, invest a few bucks in thermal pads. The quality of your enclosure can make a difference as well. I even drilled some vent holes in my enclosure that had none.

From all I've read , I do not think indexing can be turned off for Media Player but maybe I didn't read far enough and be wrong about that. I would think what makes the drives work so hard is when indexing is creating thumbnails. Maybe some scripting guru knows how to write a batch file instructing media player to use the no-thumbs option. That would be over my head though.

hdmi · Dec 23, 2023

In Windows Media Player Legacy, click on Organize ➜ Options... ➜ Devices tab ➜ double-click on the USB HDD ➜ uncheck Start sync when device connects ➜ click on OK.

Ro Wood · Dec 23, 2023

glasskuter said:
I agree with @hsehestedt. I would not consider 50 to be overheating, You do not state the kind of drives you have. For NVME drives most manufacturers recommend temps should not get above 65-70. When a disk is indexing it's working pretty hard, so 50 (or 54)for short periods of time would not concern me. The bigger the capacity, the longer indexing takes so the hotter a drive might get. If your drives are nvme and installed in a usb drive enclosure, invest a few bucks in thermal pads. The quality of your enclosure can make a difference as well. I even drilled some vent holes in my enclosure that had none.

From all I've read , I do not think indexing can be turned off for Media Player but maybe I didn't read far enough and be wrong about that. I would think what makes the drives work so hard is when indexing is creating thumbnails. Maybe some scripting guru knows how to write a batch file instructing media player to use the no-thumbs option. That would be over my head though.

My disks are two conventional USB external hard drives, one 2 TB and the other 4 TB, both from Seagate.
For conventional HDs, 50°C is a high temperature, so much so that the Hard Disk Sentinel triggers temperature alarms.

Ro Wood · Dec 23, 2023

hdmi said:
In Windows Media Player Legacy, click on Organize ➜ Options... ➜ Devices tab ➜ double-click on the USB HDD ➜ uncheck Start sync when device connects ➜ click on OK.

In Windows Media Player Legacy, the option to Start HD indexing is grayed out and cannot be selected.