turning off a hard drive?

[mjz_5]

Hi:

I have two hard drives in a windows 2000 machine. I only use the second hard drive maybe a couple times a week. Is there a way I could turn off the hard drive when it is not in use? This would save me energy, reduce heat in the case, and best of all, it won’t wear out my hard drive as fast.

Any ideas?

 

[defakto]

as far as i know, you can't hotswap standard ide, i may be wrong, but i don't htink the controller can handle. You would need some sort of ability to hotswap to turn the drive off.

 

[mjz_5]

as far as i know, you can't hotswap standard ide, i may be wrong, but i don't htink the controller can handle. You would need some sort of ability to hotswap to turn the drive off.

yeah, I was thinking of purchasing two external hard drive racks and just remove them when they are not in use.. But I don't want to spend all that money... I hope I could find some utility or something to make the second hard drive sleep or something.

 

[phaelinx]

in the bios, almost ALL motherboards have the option to either 1. turn off hds after idle time/doze time, or 2. have it spin down

or you can let windows control it. Go to display properties, then click Screen Saver, at the bottom click the Power button, and set the time limit you want the hds to turn off =/

 

[mjz_5]

in the bios, almost ALL motherboards have the option to either 1. turn off hds after idle time/doze time, or 2. have it spin down

or you can let windows control it. Go to display properties, then click Screen Saver, at the bottom click the Power button, and set the time limit you want the hds to turn off =/

but the problem with this is that you can not select which hard drive to power down.. I only want 1 out of 2 HDs to be shut down..

ooo well

 

[Nn'theraq'pss]

Start -> Control Panel -> Power Options -> Turn Off Hard Disks and then set the time.
I'm not sure if this does it on a per drive basis or overall drives.

 

[Impulse]

Start -> Control Panel -> Power Options -> Turn Off Hard Disks and then set the time.
I'm not sure if this does it on a per drive basis or overall drives.

Probably neither, the feature very likely just turns them all off when the entire computer itself is idle, not when the drive is... I could be wrong tho, just the way I always figured it worked.

 

[Impulse]

One thing you can try is excluding it from your hardware configuration, in Win XP go to System Properties and click on Hardware Profiles, then create one without the drive. Note that to access it you'd have to restart and switch to the previous profile where you do have it activated tho.

 

[grjr]

One thing you can try is excluding it from your hardware configuration, in Win XP go to System Properties and click on Hardware Profiles, then create one without the drive. Note that to access it you'd have to restart and switch to the previous profile where you do have it activated tho.

The HDD wouldn't be acessable but it probably would still be spining since HDD's spin up at power up

 

[Falls Included]

just put it on an sata controller... those are hot swapable

 

[mjz_5]

yeah, there is nothing i could do.. any setting will affect all my hard drives... the best choice will be getting an hard drive rack and just remove it when it is not in use..

mjz

 

[Anarchy]

just put it on an sata controller... those are hot swapable

The Controller, but the Drive itself is still IDE and not designed to be hot-plugged *hmm*

Another option (that costs some $$$) would be an USB or Firewire enclousure

 

[Nn'theraq'pss]

To bad that Windows doesn't have the equivalent of hdparm in the UNIX world.

 

[dainthomas]

Another option (that costs some $$$) would be an USB or Firewire enclousure

You can get one for maybe $30-40 on newegg. That' what I'm planning on doing for my old 80 gig for backups.

 

[mjz_5]

You can get one for maybe $30-40 on newegg. That' what I'm planning on doing for my old 80 gig for backups.

but you can almost buy an new 80 gig hard drive for 40 bucks

i guess i'll just move the hard drive to another computer that i don't use much.. and when i do backups, i'll just turn on that PC..

 

[Met-AL]

Put a switch onto the molex power cable. Turn it off when you don't need it. To make it readable, your gonna need to do it when the PC is off or at least reboot when you switch it on or off.

Turning of the hard drives in the power options is the way I would go tho. Windows will turn off the drive if it hasn't been accessed for the given amount of time. It will only turn on the one it needs too. I have a file server that get's all my old drives. Currently it has four old 20GB IDE drives in it. I set the power options to turn them off after 20 minutes. You can hear one spin up at a time as it's needed, so I am sure that it won't turn them all off or all on at once.

 

[Oldie]

I do this every day. I've got an internal drive enclosure that powers up when it's locked (has a key) and stays off when it's unlocked. You just pop the drive in there, and leave it off when you don't want to use it. Also comes in very handy for temporarily putting in a diff HD. Here's a link to one similare on Ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3757&item=5124899546&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

Most local computer shops can order these or carry them as well. Hope this helps. The BIOS solutions don't actually stop the drive from running, they just diable access to it.

Depending on the HD (most recent ones work fine) I "hot swap" like this all of the time. I just turn the key, pull out the tray, pop in the new drive, and turn it right back on. Windows usually detects it right away. Hope this helps.

 

[FrostBite]

easiet way, and the same thing I did for my vantax nexus fan controller - cut the yellow wire, lenghten it, and add a single pull single throw switch. You probably need to do the same thing for the 5v line though, so you will have 2 switches. You want the hard drive up, flip the switches up, you want it off, flip the switch. You can always just open your case, remove the power when your not using it, and reataching when you are going to.

edit: bleh, someone already said it. i should read these all first

 

[Canon]

Just a note on going that way is that a lot of times the system will hang if you have an HDD attached that isn't being powered. That's been my experience.

I think either external or the internal drive bay is the best plan for what you want to do. I know a friend of mine who does exactly what you want to do with an internal drive bay. He just turns off the key when he doesn't want tot use that drive.

 

[grjr]

easiet way, and the same thing I did for my vantax nexus fan controller - cut the yellow wire, lenghten it, and add a single pull single throw switch. You probably need to do the same thing for the 5v line though, so you will have 2 switches. You want the hard drive up, flip the switches up, you want it off, flip the switch. You can always just open your case, remove the power when your not using it, and reataching when you are going to.

edit: bleh, someone already said it. i should read these all first

yeah, not a good idea, you can't predict when the OS will want to acess the drive and if it isn't powered it's going to cause problems. imagine if you were using the drive and you accidentally hit the switch to the off position? Like the guy above me said, the system will usually hang. I experienced this once with a bad molex connector, the HDD would sometimes lose power, spin down and the system crashed.

 

[mjz_5]

I guess the best bet is to use windows hard drive power settings. I was reluctant to use this setting, but I will see how it works…

thanks to everyone who reply!!!!!!!!!!!! they were all wonderful ideas.

 

[AMD T-type]

The Controller, but the Drive itself is still IDE and not designed to be hot-plugged *hmm*

o_0

What exactly do you mean by that?

i unplug mine and move them between computers all the time

 

[mjz_5]

o_0

What exactly do you mean by that?

i unplug mine and move them between computers all the time

when the computer is still on?

 

[hulksterjoe]

WOW,, all of this info just to shut down a drive, First off before you spend a penny. look at it from this point of view.

The amount of power energy usage for a drive at idle is negligable- if your worring about your home electric bill. I think you be better off unplugging your vcr and microwave so the clock in those dont raise you bills.

heat on an idle drive is again negligable I-d be suprised if your case temp even changed. and as for letting it last longer, you've got a drive that you access only a couple times a week and your worried about failure.. it'll probably fall apart before it fails. for what a new drive costs you could buy a third and backup 2 that just to be safe

 

[mjz_5]

WOW,, all of this info just to shut down a drive, First off before you spend a penny. look at it from this point of view.

The amount of power energy usage for a drive at idle is negligable- if your worring about your home electric bill. I think you be better off unplugging your vcr and microwave so the clock in those dont raise you bills.

heat on an idle drive is again negligable I-d be suprised if your case temp even changed. and as for letting it last longer, you've got a drive that you access only a couple times a week and your worried about failure.. it'll probably fall apart before it fails. for what a new drive costs you could buy a third and backup 2 that just to be safe

i completely agree with you.. but i am somewhat paranoid because i had 2 hard drives fail on me at the same time... A 80 gig Seagate and an 200 gig Western Digital.. So anything i could do to prevent my hard drives from failing, can't be a bad thing (since i leave my server on ~24 hours a day)