Harddrive silencing software

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
tyeh26
Posts: 50
Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2007 12:32 pm
Location: illinois

Harddrive silencing software

Post by tyeh26 » Tue Mar 11, 2008 10:59 pm

Hey all,

For those of you with multiple internal disks for storage, sometimes they aren't in use and you would want to just turn them off. Software to do this would be ideal. I googled some stuff quickly and found this solution:

Revosleep: http://revosleep.realspooky.de/

Here is the proceeding of revoSleep:

- lock all partitions on the specified hard disk
- dismount all partitions on the specified hard disk
- sleep the specified hard disk
- put all volumes on the specified hard disk in offline state (vista)
- deactivate the driver for the specified hard disk
- the locked drives won't wake up
- u can unlock/lock different drives
I tried this on Vista x64 and it failed. Anyone that tries/tried this with success? Anyone with any other software that can shut down specific HDDS?

Edit: I managed to get this working and it works perfectly. I had my doubts with it messing with my HDD widget, but turning them back on restores their old drive letter and refreshes the widget.

Since my drives aren't suspended yet, the differences are quite obvious and pleasant.
Last edited by tyeh26 on Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

casebuyer
Posts: 119
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 pm

Post by casebuyer » Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:35 am

might be cool but is this any better than power options of windows itself

Das_Saunamies
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 2000
Joined: Tue May 15, 2007 1:39 am
Location: Finland

Post by Das_Saunamies » Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:36 am

Seeing how it's supposedly manual control with no odd chance of drives waking up due to AV checks or similar, I'd say it would have its advantages.

I don't have Vista on my desktop and the laptop only has one drive, so I can't test this.

Tomson
Posts: 58
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:08 am
Location: Slovenia, EUROPE
Contact:

Post by Tomson » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:11 pm

I'll give it a chance. I'm frustrated from VISTA wakening HDDs all the time, and then taking years to turn them off. The power off function in power Savings doesn't work at all, I mean, you set the drives to go off in a minute and the go off in half an hour. And with all the problems with updates which spin up and down the drives on minute bassis, VISTA sucks big time. So maybe a program like this could be very helpful ...

But curious about this note:

"NOTE: I can not guarantee that the program won't damage your computer. So use it carefully - using revoSleep at your own risk. Setting Hard Disks to standby-mode very often, can damage the devices. So don't switch the sleep-mode every time."

So is there really possbile to do any damage with a program like this, if you make HDDs to go to sleep few times a day, what does that mean for a drive?

tyeh26
Posts: 50
Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2007 12:32 pm
Location: illinois

Post by tyeh26 » Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:43 am

don't take what i say as the absolute truth, but:

i read that turning on and off drives repeatedly can be detrimental to the disk's health. i don't believe this, and if i lost 1 month of my drive's total life then i don't mind. i mean, there's a 5 year warranty for a reason.

but then again, every piece of electronic hardware has its own duty cycle so whatever in my opinion.

Tomson
Posts: 58
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:08 am
Location: Slovenia, EUROPE
Contact:

Post by Tomson » Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:32 am

I gues it's not totaly unharmful to make drives go sleep often but on the other hand, as you say even if you do that often, the drive's life's time shouldn't be reduced by half or something. And a month or two in 5years time isn't so much to ask, if all that time the silence is reached.

Didn't quite cathc the answer, is putting the drives in sleep mode the same as if the drives weren't connected or is there still any sound producing from this drives?

Shaman
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 278
Joined: Sun Jan 28, 2007 8:34 pm
Location: Portugal

Post by Shaman » Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:10 am

The title of this thread is funny.. silence a hard drive by turning it off... isn't that cheating by SPCR standards? :lol:

I wouldn't use this software on a drive that needs to be accessed several times a day. This should be used more on a drive that only needs to be turned on once a day, to make backups for example.

Looks like the hard drive needs to be turned on manually, so wouldn't it get tiring having to go to the revosleep options to turn it on everytime you wanted to access it?

tyeh26
Posts: 50
Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2007 12:32 pm
Location: illinois

Post by tyeh26 » Thu Mar 13, 2008 11:13 am

Tomson:

the hard drive is turned off, and the computer thinks there is no drive of that letter. I assume if you plug in another device while it is slept, your drive letters will get messed up. (just an assumption... i guess i can try it out later)

Shaman:

As i said above, i use this for my storage hard drives. Since i have a disk for movies, music, random stuff, and system. I usually have the music and system one turned on. When i watch a movie, i activate that drive. And when i go to sleep, i sleep all but system disc. It's all a preference, it's cheaper than buying/making enclosures for HDDs especially for people with multiple HDDs

pingu666
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 739
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: swindon- england :/
Contact:

Post by pingu666 » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:31 pm

my vistarse has been pretty decent actully, does it per disk (unlike xp?) sometimes it spins up, spins down, spins up the same disk. if your power management is abit wonky, try setting it to something else, then making your own custom one again

toki_c
Patron of SPCR
Posts: 64
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:27 pm
Location: Earth

Post by toki_c » Sun Mar 23, 2008 4:12 am

I agree with Thomson... vista sucks because there's only A possibility to manage severals hard drives. Vista annoys me to hell with the several "on" and "off" cycles. There's no solution with vista because if you set a high time value for shutting down hdds, those hdds would never be shut off. And in the contrary, if you set a low time value you will be annoyed as hell with several "on/off" cycles which are quiet noisy.

And yes, in fact, just the fact to shut on/off hdds several times a day decrease hdds lifetime. It's quiet logical, because a hdd has a given MTBF but with only an average "on/off" cycles a day. if you increase the "on/off" cycles a day you tend to decrease the MTBF. I will let the maths for you.

So I ended up with with a miraculous solution after several thinkings. I need XP for old games and for Catia V5 so I need two hdds (one for vista, one for xp) because I do not want to be annoyed with a dual boot on a single hard drive.
I decided to take 2 WD GP 750GB. And I will make a 32GB partion for OS, a 64GB partion for work and a 650GB partion for storage + 32Gb os back up (or a an extra 32GB partion at the end for os back up) on each hard drive.
Using two GP will be a great help and I won't need any "on/off" cycles again since those two hdds are pretty cool and quiet. Plus I have enough storage space for several months. I would have to just burn some dvds when need be and/or transfer data to others drives which will be not spinning for nothing.

EDIT: a GP series hdd draws 3.5-5W at idl. so there's really no need to bother with "on/off" cycles.

casebuyer
Posts: 119
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 pm

Post by casebuyer » Wed Jul 09, 2008 5:21 am

dont your vista see your xp drive how you get rid off the situation

also if you have more than 3 disk and if this application can shut off each harddisk seperately than yes it is useful

at least you can use it at nights or for testing noise in your computer

gustavs_a
Posts: 48
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2003 3:20 am

Post by gustavs_a » Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:40 pm

Great program. Thanks!

Post Reply