Spin Down One Drive in Windows 7?

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IAmMark

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Aug 30, 2009
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Since getting my Intel X25-M, I've really been enjoying how quiet my PC is. I planned on using my older hard drive to store pictures, music, etc., but I'd prefer that it not be running all the time. Is it possible to somehow set a specific drive to spin down after a period of inactivity?
 
Have you tried the "turn off hard disk after.." setting in power options>advanced settings menu? The only other thing I can think of atm is if the drive is external hooked up via usb you can eject it and turn it off that way.
 
Thanks. The power management setting would be perfect if you could specify it by drive. Unfortunately, it isn't that granular (unless there's some registry trick that you can do), and it would turn off all of the drives, including the SSD.

The USB suggestion is definitely a thought, but I'd still prefer to have it done internally.

Thanks again.
 
I dont think it's possible unfortunately. I find the "turn off hard disk" after XX minutes option in Windows to be pretty useless, because Windows always seems to read/write to the disk every so often. get a WD Green, those drives will park the heads automatically after a period of inactivity.
 
dydx said:
I dont think it's possible unfortunately. I find the "turn off hard disk" after XX minutes option in Windows to be pretty useless, because Windows always seems to read/write to the disk every so often. get a WD Green, those drives will park the heads automatically after a period of inactivity.
Click to expand...

I disagree - i've been running a Win7 system with two HDDs, one OS and one for music/movies etc. After i'd watched/listened to anything I could hear the data drive spin down after the time period I set for HDDs to spin down, so it seems mainly the OS drive is read/written every so often.

In any case, why does it matter if the setting would also apply to the SSD? If there was a period of inactivity and it was powered down, it's not going to cause any problems/damage, and it would probably be quick to power up again.
 
+1 what Concentric said

Though back in Win98 days I had an app to shut down drives individually. So it's possible, not sure anyone's done this with SATA, but it's definatelly something that could be coded.
 
Yep - what concentric said. I did a clean install of Win7 on my new G2 Intel SSD and kept a 640gb drive in the system for data storage. I've heard it power the mechanical drive down many times already. The only catch to it is if you do decide to write to it you have a system pause while you listen to it spin back up. Oddly you also have that pause if you try to shut down while the mechanical drive is powered down. It has to power it back up to shut down. lol
 
I have a setup that probably addresses your concern. My win 7 install is on my intel g2 ssd, all of my data (movies etc) is stored on a SATA raid. I set up win 7 to power down hard disks after 5 or so minutes. Even though there isnt much granularity with what disks get shut down, windows appears to set a timer for each disk. That is to say, if I am using win 7, my ssd wont ever turn off. If i am not watching any movies, my drives will spin down after 5 minutes.

Take away = enable power options to automatically spin down disks.
 
If you set the "turn off hard disk after" option... disks that aren't being used for the set number of minutes will spin down. Others that have been accessed will stay spinning. :)
It works fine on my Raid5 server... the array is spun down this way
 
SSDs likely ignore spin down commands as well, so a global setting should be fine.
 
On a related note, how can I stop a single hard drive from spinning down from inactivity? I have two hard drives in my computer, and the non-OS drive keeps spinning down despite setting my power settings to not turn off the hard drives.

Is it the Hitachi hardware itself that's initializing the spin down when it's idling? If so, that might explain why the Windows setting has no affect.
 
Create a scheduled task that will write and then delete a text file on the drive once every couple of minutes?
 
Ryom, why do you recommend writing to the drive instead of reading from it? Wouldn't reading from it keep it awake without the negative side effects of writing to it?
 
Eh mike you're replying to a post that's almost 4 years ago :)
 
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