Utility To Force Hard Disks Into Standby?

[Gav80K]

Years ago I found a free utility that enabled you to force individual hard disks into standby, so they stopped spinning and save power.

This was very useful because Windows doesn't have settings for individual drives so you either have them all going into standby or none of them. With this utility I could leave my most used drives active at all times and put my less commonly used drives into standby.

Unfortunately I deleted the utility and I can't remember what it was called. No matter what i search for I can't find it again. Does anybody know what it's called or where I can get it?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[lilfiend]

I use this software to spin down my drives: HDDScan – free HDD test utility with USB flash and RAID support
I do it to reduce noise/vibrations, I also use it for AAM.
With some drives you can turn the motor off completely. Do note that the drive isn't disconnected or turned off, it's just that the disk isn't spinning so it's using a lot less power.

Ripped that off another forum, no clue if it will work or not...

 

[Gav80K]

Ripped that off another forum, no clue if it will work or not...

Thanks, that looks pretty good and has a lot more features than the utility I was previously using.

It does have a few drawbacks. Stopping a drive requires a few more clicks than the old utility, and it just lists the driver's model rather than the dive letter so it's hard to know which drive is which.

I might keep looking for the old one, but this'll do if I can't find it.

Thanks again for the link.

 

[lilfiend]

would HotSwap do it?

 

[Gav80K]

would HotSwap do it?

That removes the device from the system so it would no longer show up in My Computer and there'd be no way to start it up again without restarting the computer or unplugging it and plugging it in again.

HDScan would probably be better still work better because you can access the drive from My Computer and it'll start spinning again.

Thanks again for the suggestion though.