Hi,
Does anyone know if Windows power management keeps a seperate timer for each drive? In a multiple drive machine, you may find that the drive that holds the system partition is more or less constantly accessed, so won't be spun down, but will that prevent other drives that are very rarely accessed being spun down?
The versions of Windows I'm interested in (I think they will probably all behave the same way) are XP, Vista, Windows 2003, and WHS.
Thanks,
Aitor
drive spin down in Windows
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Windows spindown timers are "separate" as in each drive has a timer of it's own. But they are "not separate" as in each drive's times has the same target value. This may simply be due to graphical interface not having the option to configure them separately, it might be possibly to registry hack it but I'm not certain.
So, having one constantly accessed HDD in a system won't prevent others from entering stand-by mode. If you want to configure different timer targer values for different drives, use HDDScan to set spindown counter there. The HDDs are capable of counting idle time without support from OS and without stressing CPU. Windows spindown counters are based on software (thus, if your system freezes, you're HDDs won't spin down even if the system remained frozen for a whole week).
HDDScan allows user to configure APM feature (only supported by Hitachis) which can be used to make the drive spin slowly (but not stop completely) when a specified idle period has occured. This also can be configured separately for every drive.
Also worth remembering: HDD once configured with HDDScan will remember it's power saving settings (regular PM (complete spindown) or advanced PM (low-rpm)), even if HDD is installed to another system with different OS. While HDDScan doesn't probably work with 64-bit OSes, you can configure them once in 32-bit XP and move the drive to other systems regardless of their OS.
I prefer hardware timers, but that's mostly because I run HDDs in USB enclosures and USB interface is incapable of transfering spindown commands. Windows power management wouldn't work with external drives... at least not with default drivers.
So, having one constantly accessed HDD in a system won't prevent others from entering stand-by mode. If you want to configure different timer targer values for different drives, use HDDScan to set spindown counter there. The HDDs are capable of counting idle time without support from OS and without stressing CPU. Windows spindown counters are based on software (thus, if your system freezes, you're HDDs won't spin down even if the system remained frozen for a whole week).
HDDScan allows user to configure APM feature (only supported by Hitachis) which can be used to make the drive spin slowly (but not stop completely) when a specified idle period has occured. This also can be configured separately for every drive.
Also worth remembering: HDD once configured with HDDScan will remember it's power saving settings (regular PM (complete spindown) or advanced PM (low-rpm)), even if HDD is installed to another system with different OS. While HDDScan doesn't probably work with 64-bit OSes, you can configure them once in 32-bit XP and move the drive to other systems regardless of their OS.
I prefer hardware timers, but that's mostly because I run HDDs in USB enclosures and USB interface is incapable of transfering spindown commands. Windows power management wouldn't work with external drives... at least not with default drivers.
i don't think it is, i posted something about how to set a custom time for drive spin down (ie, inc < 3m, stuff not included in the drop-down list) here a while back, and the registry just has one entry AFAIK. but its not usually a problem, just set it to whatever you would for the non-windows drive and the windows drive is unlikely to be affected.whiic wrote:it might be possibly to registry hack it but I'm not certain.