Spinning down unused Hard discs - How?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Graham
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Graham

Hi,

I have a machine which I use for video encoding, adjustments and so on with
about 5 hard drives inside it.

Often when proccessing data, only 1 or 2 drives are being used.

Is there any way of setting the other drives to spin down after say 30mins
of non-use??

2 of the drives are on a third party interface (ran out of IDE sockets on
the mobo)

Cheers!
 
Graham said:
I have a machine which I use for video encoding, adjustments and so on
with
about 5 hard drives inside it.

Often when proccessing data, only 1 or 2 drives are being used.

Is there any way of setting the other drives to spin down after say 30mins
of non-use??
Click to expand...

Check the Power options in your Control Panel, and have the disks spin down
after some idle time.
 
Graham said:
Hi,

I have a machine which I use for video encoding, adjustments and so on with
about 5 hard drives inside it.

Often when proccessing data, only 1 or 2 drives are being used.

Is there any way of setting the other drives to spin down after say 30mins
of non-use??

2 of the drives are on a third party interface (ran out of IDE sockets on
the mobo)

Cheers!
Click to expand...

There might be a way to do this in Windows somewhere.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306613/en-us

http://wiki.shareaza.com/static/Troubleshoot.Lockups (a picture)

At the disk drive level, there are options tuned for
laptop drive use. These might be a bit too severe
for what you want. See page 13 of the manual for
a description.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/FTool_User_Guide_201.pdf

I think I'd look in Windows first.

Paul
 
Graham said:
I have a machine which I use for video encoding, adjustments and so on with
about 5 hard drives inside it.

Often when proccessing data, only 1 or 2 drives are being used.

Is there any way of setting the other drives to spin down after say 30mins
of non-use??
Click to expand...

Recent versions of Windows allow this. On Windows XP, from the Start
bar, look at Settings | Control Panel | Power Options | Power Schemes.
You can set the time you want them to run there.

Note that spinning disks up and down too frequently may reduce their
life expectancies.
 
Mxsmanic said:
Recent versions of Windows allow this. On Windows XP, from the Start bar,
look at Settings | Control Panel | Power Options | Power Schemes. You can
set the time you want them to run there.

Note that spinning disks up and down too frequently may reduce their life
expectancies.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the replies.
I wasn't sure if that would operate for each indivdual drive separately (but
having thought about it a bit further, it would be a bit pointless if it
didn't).

Many thanks.
 
Graham said:
Thanks for the replies.
I wasn't sure if that would operate for each indivdual drive separately
(but
having thought about it a bit further, it would be a bit pointless if it
didn't).
Click to expand...

It works on a demand basis. Those drives not accessed will spin down; those
being used remain spinning. Works well for my SATA RAID 1 primary array and
2 SCSI data/backup drives. The 2 SCSI drives seldom spin up.

Just use a reasonable idle time for the spindown (e.g., 2 hours) to prevent
overcycling.
 
I know, lots of opinions:

here is the most important one:

leave your drives spinning! It is cheap! Only startup costs a lot of amps.
Theta-0 drives (standing still) attract deposits.
You augment your risk of a head crash by a factor of some 1000s if you
leave your drive stopped, not spinning.

A bad idea, believe me!

Mirror? no protection if both drives are stopped!

Keep them spinning, cleaning themselves and keeping dirt out.

Mike
 
At least you acknowledge your post is only an opinion, even if you think
it's "the most important one"...

What kind of deposits do you think are going to be occuring on your hard
drive? And what dirt are you trying to keep out? The drives (AFAIK) are
sealed by the manufacturer, and there's no way for "dirt" to get into them.
They don't even let dust in.

Show your proof of anything you said after the first line, if you don't
mind.

Clint
 
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