Spin down one drive of two?

amyhughes · Post by **amyhughes** » Fri May 30, 2008 10:31 am

Is there a way to spin down one drive (of two or more) in WinXP? Will the "turn off hard disks" power option do this automatically, or does that spin all drives together?

I have one drive that I want to spin up only perhaps once per week, so ideally any scheme to spin it down during non-use would be automatic, or at least persistent between reboots and daily hibernation.

Thanks,
Amy

Cryoburner · Post by **Cryoburner** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:27 pm

I believe the 'turn off hard disks' power option applies the same setting to all drives. The time at which they turn off is based on the activity of the individual drive though, so if you have them set to 15 minutes, a drive will turn off after it has been inactive for 15 minutes, even if another has been accessed in the mean time. Some drives or external enclosures won't power down though, and the same is true if the drive is regularly accessed by Windows or some background application.

I don't think the drive will stay powered down after a reboot though. You'll have to wait for the inactivity timeout to pass before it will turn itself off. Once it's down, it shouldn't power up until you access it or reboot the computer again though.

Csoszi · Post by **Csoszi** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 3:52 am

Try revoSleep. http://revosleep.realspooky.de/
After each power up you should run it to sleep the specified drive(s). However I don't know if the turned off drive will remain off after waking from hibernation.