I understand how the hardware works, I'm talking about software here. I've just never dug into external HD drivers so I don't know if you can get windows to convince them to spin down or not. It ought to be possible since an external drive is just an internal drive with some additional interface circuitry and a case. It would take about 30 seconds to test if you popped open the Power Options Property window. Alan had said his external drive would just keep spinning thus my question. Basically what I was driving towards is that if the drive spins constantly while plugged in, even if the machine is off, then what he could do is leave the machine on but in a mostly powered down standby mode and thus get the drive to spin down.
