Turn off HDD spin down? [Windows 7]


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  On 17/03/2011 at 17:52, Detection said:

Yea I hate this feature on desktops too, makes sense on battery power, why it would be default on mains power is beyond me -

1) Bring electricity bill down.

2) Save the planet when idle.

3) Reduce ware and tare.

  On 17/03/2011 at 18:12, Vegetunks said:

1) Bring electricity bill down.

2) Save the planet when idle.

3) Reduce ware and tare.

Having your hard drive spin up and down constantly does not reduce wear and tear; quite the opposite. As for the electric bill I doubt the the increase is even noticable, but I'll gladly pay the extra penny to not have to put up with the annoyance of it.

I have an external hard drive, Samsung Story Station, that spins down after just a few minutes and takes an eternity to spin up again, lagging the whole system. Unfortunately it seems this function is built into the firmware and cannot be turned off. :(

  On 17/03/2011 at 18:12, Vegetunks said:

1) Bring electricity bill down.

2) Save the planet when idle.

3) Reduce ware and tare.

1. By an Unnoticeable amount

2. Huh ?

3. No - keeping it spinning will reduce wear and tear a great deal more than have it spin down and back up every 20 mins

  On 17/03/2011 at 18:16, TRC said:

I have an external hard drive, Samsung Story Station, that spins down after just a few minutes and takes an eternity to spin up again, lagging the whole system. Unfortunately it seems this function is built into the firmware and cannot be turned off. :(

Had the same issue with my Drobo, the solution was a Cron task setup to dump a 50mb empty file onto the root of the drive and then delete it every few minutes. Worked perfectly. Don't see why it wouldn't work on Windows too.

  On 20/03/2011 at 19:09, Seizure1990 said:

But surely setting your hard drive to spin down after, let's say, an hour, makes sense? One would assume that by that point, you have left your computer and its ok for everything to go idle.

that's what sleep mode is for, surely?

  On 20/03/2011 at 19:09, Seizure1990 said:

But surely setting your hard drive to spin down after, let's say, an hour, makes sense? One would assume that by that point, you have left your computer and its ok for everything to go idle.

How so, if you have multiple harddrives in a system and you are only browsing or playing a game, then when you come to access a file on another drive you have to wait for it to spin up.

  On 20/03/2011 at 19:14, houlty said:

that's what sleep mode is for, surely?

What if I'm torrenting something to one drive, and the other isn't being used?

I'm honestly asking, as this is how I have my computer set up currently, and I was wondering if it makes sense.

My computer does go to sleep (well, hibernate actually) after a couple hours too, but certain background tasks prevent that, such as torrents, in which case I'd like as much of the computer to go into idle as possible, while still doing what needs to be done.

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