Sleepy drives

How can I stop external hard drives from going to 'sleep'. I have five USB Western Digital 1TB drives on a USB hub and they all go to sleep after a while. This is really annoying when using Final Cut as I am often having to wait for the drive to spin up before playback can start.
I have five Firewire Lacie Quadra 1TB drives (daisy-chained) but these don't go to sleep. What's the difference?
Thanks

I asume that you have unchecked "Put the hard disks to sleep when possible" in System Preferences->Energy Saver panel. If so, then you may be dealing with an issue that only affects certain WD drives, which have firmware that does this independently.
bd

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