Hard drive spin down.

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

This may be a stupid question ... but hey ... I don't know the answer, so I will ask.

I am building an HTPC. It will have two 500GB Sata drives in it. I want to have the "extra" drive always spin down and stay that way until called on for files.

Is there a way to "spin down" only one drive in a multi-drive system?

Essentially I want it "off" until I need to wake it for file usage or storage.

EVGA 7150 MOBO Matx 32MB Cache Satas ... one is the server type.

[screwballl]

many newer drives do this automatically anyways... I would check the specs of the drives to see if it supports that feature with a setting or if it does it automatically.

[Zambini]

This somewhat relates to his question: is there something that lets u read the HDD RPMS? kinda like Speedfan, but for ur HDDs? He could use it to see if his do it already.

[stinger608]

Not sure if you can put the second drive to "sleep" or not, but letting a drive spin down, and then spinning back up at a regular interval will most likely shorten the life of said drive.
If you are just going to access the drive once a week or every couple of days, then maybe that would be a good choice. But if you are installing movies, or music that will be accessed daily, then no, do not have the drive go in "sleep" mode.

You might check in the disk management area of the operating system to see if there is an application that will allow you to put separate drive to "sleep".


@ Screwballl, I don't know where you got that kind of information that newer drives do this automatically, but that is way out in left field my friend, that is done within the operating system, not from the drive itself

[Boy'nBlack]

Anyone with an external drive, has software to put that single drive to sleep. And it's not bad to do.

research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

"there is no significant correlation between failures and high power cycles count. For drives 3 years and older, higher power cycle counts can increase the absolute failure rate by 2%"

Most people turn their computers off when they're done. Some of us don't and strive for no down time. So who's at risk more; those that power cycle several times a day or us doing pretty constant writes/re-writes? Heat and writing hurt drives. The only part spin-up had hurt, is the take off of the head off the platter before it builds aerodynamics and flys...but that was cured a LONG time ago. In an SFF, sleeping a drive can save some degree's from being added to the case...crucial IMO.

So park the drive. But don't be surprised if it doesn't just sleep like you think it will. I don't think Windows can individually put down separate drives like Linux is able to do.

[gvblake22]

You can tell Windows XP to turn off the hard drive after a certain period of inactivity, is that what you are looking for?
(see attached image)
But I think that might turn off ALL the drives, not just one in particular. Either way, this operation will have to be done through software somehow, I'm pretty sure the hard drive its self will not spin down while there is still power going to it.

[Boy'nBlack]

I think you're right Blake. I've yet to find control of individual drives in XP. It still seems to treat drives as a bank and not port by port. The hard drive controllers can obviously do that, Linux can, and I've used non-shareware apps in Vista...so Vista probably has a setting I can't find buried away.

So I think if one drive wakes up, the others will in short time. There's HDDLed where you can watch individual drive activity, but that's not free either. Kinda lame there's no shareware, as that $20 is expensive for a blinking taskbar icon.

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

Yeah ... I want to just turn off one drive ... it will take several months of filling drive C up with Movies etc ... before I will need the extra internal drive ... I could put it on as an Esata ... then manually turn it off ... but that is kinda a pain.

I haven't found anything in windows that will do it ... yet.

[screwballl]

Seagate Technology - SV35.2 Series? Hard Drives

Spin-down feature and PowerOn control allow for cooler operation and power savings

WD VelociRaptor 300 GB SATA Hard Drives ( WD3000GLFS )

SecurePark™ - Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off.

Note, it separates the terms spin down and turned off

Case Studies

“You’ll be able to have multipetabyte archives of data that, if you’re not actively accessing, the drives can spin down, but the electronics are still on,” Goldstein said. “In this mode, they consume very little power, but can still be spun up rapidly if data needs to be accessed.

Granted this is for a server hard drive but it is there...

Support | Deskstar 7k500 Jumpers and configuration

Auto Spin Disable, disables the drive from automatically spinning up when power is applied.

A jumper disabling the drive auto spin up, will only spin up when queued

http://www.samsung.com/global/busine..._bbs_msg_id=94

Q .My drive automatically powers down after a few minutes of not being in use. What should I do to stop it?
A .


* Syptom
Automatically powers down after a few minutes of not being in use.

* Cause
Your drive is only designed to power down when a command has been issued by the BIOS.

* Solution
Mostly it is caused when the "Power Management" option in the system BIOS is enabled.
Please disable the above option. If your drive powers down even after disabling the option in the BIOS, Please contact the motherboard manufacturer or dealer for further instructions.

So it is quite prevalent on most hard drives nowadays... this information was taken from the major 4: WD, Seagate, Hitachi and Samsung

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

Seems there isn't a way to individually spin down a drive ... it sure seems someone would write a utility for it though ... I think I'll look at sourceforge ...