Recordings wont play 1st time is disk is in standby/sleep

My hard drive where my Live TV recordings are stored goes to sleep after x minutes if not used (in my aim to reduce power consumption and generation of heat in a fanless setup). if my HD is asleep and I go to play a recording Kodi wont play it first time around… I can hear the HD wake up and cycle, although there’s no gui error messages (I haven’t looked in the log yet).

I get the blue “waiting/loading” image and then after ~10 seconds Kodi will fall back to the recording menu (or home screen if I selected the recordings from the recently recordings). selecting the recording immediately after the failed “play” immediately plays the recording… it’s almost like Kodi doesn’t give it enough time and times out?

Apart from telling my HD to not go asleep, is there anything I can do? I’ve had a quick look at the Advanced settings and there is nothing obvious..