Spinning down individual hard disks

Berserker · 13 Jan 2006 at 16:11

I don't use all the disks in my PCs all the time, so I'd like to spin down the ones that don't get used much. I don't want to use power management to do this as that applies to all disks, and regular spin down/up cycles puts extra strain on the hardware.

Anyone got any ideas? I found some really old shareware that might work, but I'd prefer free if possible. After all, I can do this in Linux for free.

Scottland · 13 Jan 2006 at 16:59

I asked a few weeks ago, and apparantly there is no way of doing it

What is the shareware software that you found to do it?

NathanE · 13 Jan 2006 at 17:33

Been searching for a way to do for years.

Let me know if you find out!

Ricochet J · 13 Jan 2006 at 17:41

Whats spin down/up. I've got linux, if its worth it I might do it

Berserker · 14 Jan 2006 at 00:13

Linux users can use hdparm -S to set the standby time for individual disks. Works a treat.

As for Windows, I found a program called hdsleep that's supposed to work, but (a) it was written in 1999, (b) I could only find a shareware version, (c) the guy who wrote it has disappeared from the web, and (d) there are reports it doesn't work on WinXP anyway.

Django x2 · 21 Dec 2020 at 07:42

I think this is because the world has moved away from mechanical disks, therefore, spin up/spin down is not a thing for modern disks in W10, or any other OS for that matter.

Semple · 21 Dec 2020 at 08:08

Django x2 said:
I think this is because the world has moved away from mechanical disks, therefore, spin up/spin down is not a thing for modern disks in W10, or any other OS for that matter.

Any reason you've necro'd a 14 year old thread?

From my experience/understanding I don't think you can completely shut off a disk, most manufacturers firmware will spin the disks periodically to ensure all the moving parts still work. If it didn't do this then on an occasion the OS wants to write to disk, it would fail to spin up and have to return an error to the OS to say write failed.

Django x2 · 24 Dec 2020 at 19:14

Semple said:
Any reason you've necro'd a 14 year old thread?

From my experience/understanding I don't think you can completely shut off a disk, most manufacturers firmware will spin the disks periodically to ensure all the moving parts still work. If it didn't do this then on an occasion the OS wants to write to disk, it would fail to spin up and have to return an error to the OS to say write failed.

Wow, no idea, it was near the top of page one the other day. :eek:

digitaldreams · 19 Jan 2021 at 20:23

Tried looking if the disk maker has a utility program to do this ?

Scort · 21 Jan 2021 at 22:39

Berserker said:
I don't use all the disks in my PCs all the time, so I'd like to spin down the ones that don't get used much. I don't want to use power management to do this as that applies to all disks, and regular spin down/up cycles puts extra strain on the hardware.

Anyone got any ideas? I found some really old shareware that might work, but I'd prefer free if possible. After all, I can do this in Linux for free.

Just take the disk Offline in Disk Management - it's what I do with a couple of 6TB internal drives - they only spin up when set back to Online.

Edit: yikes didn't see the OP date, guess Django is just bored