the setting in drivemanager does not work. is there cron script i can use to access the drive every minute so that the hard drives do not sleep? could you please provide the script so i can put it in the /etc/cron.minutely folder? thank you 
cron.minutely is disabled by default, you need to enable it from dietpi-cron first.
Add an executable script in there:
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/touch /path/to/drive/testfile