pretty easily to test without getting bogged down in the weeds if you’re comfortable in terminal:
cd <drive path>
while true; do
date > test_file.txt
sleep 10
done
this will loop infinitely and write the the disk every 10s until you cancel, so should keep the disk awake… of course, if that works you can spend time figuring out how to keep the disk awake, or how to make VLC load less into RAM
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