[LAU] External USB 2 HD for real-time recording

Hi, an external hard drive does spin down too often for my taste. It's a http://www.wdc.com/global/products/specs/?driveID=762&language=1 and I wonder if there's a way to disable it. "All WD external hard drives will spin down (enter into power saver mode) after 10 minutes of drive inactivity. Once the drive is accessed again, the drive will exit from the power saver mode and spin back up. Please Note: This is a permanent feature of most of our external hard drives and cannot be disabled. WD externals that include the WD SmartWare software can use the software to change and/or disable this feature." - http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1376/ Regarding to a German PDF SmartWare doesn't support this particular external hard drive and even if it would, it seems to need Windows or OS X. I guess it's impossible to disable it or to increase the time, but perhaps it's better if I anyway ask the community. Is there a way to adjust this feature? I fear that spinning up and down again and again, will reduce the lifetime of the drive significantly and assumed I'll use it for recording, it might cause performance issues. Is it possible to use such drives for recording, without any risk? If I would test it, I might not cover all worst case scenarios, think it wouldn't cause issues and then be surprised if it fails in an unfavorable moment. This drive should be used as a backup media only, but I'm thinking to buy an additional external hard drive for recording, to be able to visit a Windows user (Mac became seldom here :), but to boot Linux from the drive and to record on the drive. Regards, Ralf