Problems with external hard drive on MBP 2.4GHz.

I have two external hard drives I connect via USB. One is a Western Digital My Book Pro II 2TB that works perfectly and is formatted in NTFS. Than I have a LaCie 250GB hard drive formatted in FAT32.

Right now, the LaCie is turned on, but OS X has told it to turn the hard disk off. Unplugging the USB cable and plugging it back in does not tell the hard disk to turn back on. So now I have to get up, switch it off in the back, than switch it back on in order to get the hard disk to turn on and for OS X to recognize it.

Is there any way I can disable these "power saving" features? I'd rather the hard disks ran 24/7 instead of shutting themselves off.

The LaCie's firmware is up to date according to the tools from their website. It's in perfect working condition and works fine for my two Windows based machines. It's just this one little hitch that bugs me.

For those wondering, the LaCie is using an extended cable and is out of reach. Also, I'm disabled and at times bed-ridden and it's very inconvenient when I need to access data from it but can't without turning it off and back on again.

 

Have you got the 'put hard disks to sleep whenever possible' box unchecked in Energy Saver settings?

 

Yes, they are unchecked. The 2TB will go to sleep once in awhile, but it'll awake immediately. When the LaCie goes to sleep, it's unable to wake up again unless it's turned off and back on.