Prevent a external HDD from sleeping

I have a new 3tb HDD (WD 3TB mybook ) that i store my films on and use to stream via the PC to the TV.
I have found that even though its a powered hdd it sleeps , i have installed the WD drive utilities and turned off sleep after 30 minutes, but it says that it sleeps if not in use after 30 mins - if im streaming a film from the drive then the pc must be reading it so why does it sleep?
The PC does sleep during playback so will the external HDD still sleep because the PC does?
Playing the films from the PC internal harddrive doesnt get affected by the pc sleeping.

I saw this linked in a Western Digital forum. I’ve not used it, but it might be worth trying.

It’s a program that writes an empty txt file to the hard drive to prevent it from sleeping.

Edit: And welcome to the forum!

Thanks rock8man.
I’ll give it a go and see what happens.
Thanks for the welcome too 😊