External Hard Drive Keeps Going to Sleep Too Fast

I jut got a Mac Studio. It's a great computer. But, I've noticed that the external hard drives I have keep going to sleep every 30 seconds or so ... then have to cycle back on. I edit in premier ... and its killing my work flow.

I can't decide if this is a M1/2 chip issue or a software update. I had this issue on my old 2015 iMac after the latest update.

It is Mac wanting to put eh external HD to sleep? I've unchecked put hard drives to sleep.

Google is full of people with Mac computer with this issue ... going back about 5 years as far as I can tell.

Any thoughts?