Putting Drives on Standby

[syrian_gamer]

Hello SPCR readers,

I currently have Windows XP set to put the drive to standby after 3 minutes if nothing access the drive.

Start>Control panel> power options > turn off HD > 3 min

Now this runs great as it gives my drive some time to cool down. HOWEVER it spins down and spins back up after only 2 minutes. so basically its constantly spinning up and down. when im not even ACCESSING the drive!!! anybody know how i could get the drive to stay on standby until i freaking say so???

[jessekopelman]

Do you only have a single HDD in your system? If so, putting the drive to sleep without putting the entire system to sleep isn't going to work, as Windows will want to write the Page File (Virtual Memory) to the HDD every once in a while. You could disable Virtual Memory, but this will severely impact performance (unless you are running 64bit Windows and have >4GB of RAM).

If you are actually talking about putting a secondary drive to sleep, you may want to look into using a 3rd party utility like hdparm, rather than trying to get things done through the OS alone. Windows, is pretty notorious for not being good at this.

[__Miguel_]

What jessekopelman said.

Plus, do keep in mind that some third-party software (most notably Spybot - and some other real-time protectors - and the Intel Wireless Manager) just LOVE to keep trashing just about any HDD in the system with file open and file close handles. It's a mess, I tell you...

If you want to check who is unparking your drives, there is a free utility from Sysinternals that lists every single file access happening on the system, and the process who issued the command. I don't remember the name exactly, but check the "File Utilities" sub-site, Sysinternals is notoriously explicit on which software does what.

Cheers.

Miguel

[dhanson865]

1. unless it is a laptop or you are in some off the grid situation like a science station or a rural area don't set the power down time for the hard drive at 3 minutes. Pick something more reasonable. If you are serious about it test at 5 mins and see if isn't more consistent (should stay on more or even all the time). Keep upping that until you see that sort of behaviour in normal use. Maybe you end up with it set to 5, 10, 15, or 20 mins.

2. If you are a serious tweeker you can disable services you don't need (be very careful this can be a problem if you disable too much)

3. Uninstall, disable, change preferences for any startup items especially stuff that sits on the taskbar like quicktime, adobe reader, instant messengers, etc. Don't forget about your antivirus it will look for new defs and run scheduled scans and such.

4. Make sure you don't have a file sharing app open. Torrents or gnutella clients will access the disk a lot.

5. Turning off Virtual memory is an option but even if you don't have much ram restricting the virtual memory to a fixed size and a smaller size might help. No VM is ok so long as you have at least 1GB ram in XP and have minimal usage patterns. If you do much more than browse the web and email you may need more ram to get away with that. MSFT recommends VM equal to 1.5 x your physical ram. You might try 2GB - Physical ram instead if you find that turning it off causes you problems.

6. When you are sure you have everything tuned revisit the time from number one but don't freak if you still have to leave it at a higher number than 3 minutes. You just can't keep it off most of the time if the system is active.

[syrian_gamer]

If you are actually talking about putting a secondary drive to sleep, you may want to look into using a 3rd party utility like hdparm, rather than trying to get things done through the OS alone. Windows, is pretty notorious for not being good at this.

This is a secondary hard drive. Ill give hdparm a shot. is it the same as diskmon?

1. unless it is a laptop or you are in some off the grid situation like a science station or a rural area don't set the power down time for the hard drive at 3 minutes. Pick something more reasonable. If you are serious about it test at 5 mins and see if isn't more consistent (should stay on more or even all the time). Keep upping that until you see that sort of behaviour in normal use. Maybe you end up with it set to 5, 10, 15, or 20 mins.

2. If you are a serious tweeker you can disable services you don't need (be very careful this can be a problem if you disable too much)

3. Uninstall, disable, change preferences for any startup items especially stuff that sits on the taskbar like quicktime, adobe reader, instant messengers, etc. Don't forget about your antivirus it will look for new defs and run scheduled scans and such.

4. Make sure you don't have a file sharing app open. Torrents or gnutella clients will access the disk a lot.

5. Turning off Virtual memory is an option but even if you don't have much ram restricting the virtual memory to a fixed size and a smaller size might help. No VM is ok so long as you have at least 1GB ram in XP and have minimal usage patterns. If you do much more than browse the web and email you may need more ram to get away with that. MSFT recommends VM equal to 1.5 x your physical ram. You might try 2GB - Physical ram instead if you find that turning it off causes you problems.

6. When you are sure you have everything tuned revisit the time from number one but don't freak if you still have to leave it at a higher number than 3 minutes. You just can't keep it off most of the time if the system is active.

well here is the problem. I set it to 3 minutes so that it only takes 3 minutes after my system is active for it to shut down. I dont see how setting it higher will solve anything, it will just take more time for the drive to stand by. Its not a laptop but a desktop with a secondary drive that i use during the odd occasion.

it seems that the only virtual memory that is active is on my primary drive which is the 1 thats always on.

ill post back here after trying the programs mentioned above.

[syrian_gamer]

What jessekopelman said.

Plus, do keep in mind that some third-party software (most notably Spybot - and some other real-time protectors - and the Intel Wireless Manager) just LOVE to keep trashing just about any HDD in the system with file open and file close handles. It's a mess, I tell you...

If you want to check who is unparking your drives, there is a free utility from Sysinternals that lists every single file access happening on the system, and the process who issued the command. I don't remember the name exactly, but check the "File Utilities" sub-site, Sysinternals is notoriously explicit on which software does what.

Cheers.

Miguel

Diskmon: from sysinternals seems to not give me any information at all. there are no device names or anything. thus there is no way for me to know what is accessing the drive. just that its accessing sector 127

[dhanson865]

it seems that the only virtual memory that is active is on my primary drive which is the 1 thats always on.

As you have it right now the OS is powering down both drives not just one drive. It doesn't matter which drive is being accessed as the power settings apply to All drives.

If it is a secondary drive you should put it on a separate power supply. Physically turn it off and then you can leave the OS settings at a reasonable time limit. The easiest way to do that is with an external USB enclosure.

If you don't separate the drives then you have to do everything you can to keep your PC from accessing either drive. Any disk activity at all will wake both drives.

[Csoszi]

The solution to your problem is called Revosleep. Works like charm for me.

http://revosleep.realspooky.de/

[__Miguel_]

Diskmon: from sysinternals seems to not give me any information at all.

You stopped reading the page too soon.

Try Filemon instead That one will tell you which process is accessing what and where.

@Csoszi: That seems an interesting way of circumventing some problems... Do you know if the drives power-up again if needed (direct access from Explorer, or from the network)? If so, that could actually be a great idea to add to a WHS machine...

Cheers.

Miguel


P.S.: Btw, if that utility does what it think it does (parking the drives), then it seems a bit "harsh"... Usually parking drives requires a reboot for them to come on-line again... No?

[EsaT]

P.S.: Btw, if that utility does what it think it does (parking the drives), then it seems a bit "harsh"... Usually parking drives requires a reboot for them to come on-line again... No?

Just remember to make difference between y and Y...
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_ma ... t_features
http://hdparm-win32.dyndns.org/hdparm/


HDDScan also shows timer settings along AAM data.
http://hddscan.com/

What I've tried at least some WDs appear to have timer locked somehow probably requiring own tool of WD for changing it.

[__Miguel_]

Just remember to make difference between y and Y...

Never capitalization made so much difference...

Thanks for the heads up.

Cheers.

Miguel

[EsaT]

Just remember to make difference between y and Y...

Never capitalization made so much difference...

If you think that's big difference guess what's the difference between AGM-86B and AGM-86C?
Answer: About 150 kilotons :here.

Hdparm has different meaning for capital and lowercase of most letters so better be precise with that program.

[Aris]

spinning down your drive is a bad idea anyhow. You dont want your drive to "cool down". repeated temp variances will cause your drive to prematurely fail.

[syrian_gamer]

Diskmon: from sysinternals seems to not give me any information at all.

You stopped reading the page too soon.

Try Filemon instead That one will tell you which process is accessing what and where.

@Csoszi: That seems an interesting way of circumventing some problems... Do you know if the drives power-up again if needed (direct access from Explorer, or from the network)? If so, that could actually be a great idea to add to a WHS machine...

Cheers.

Miguel


P.S.: Btw, if that utility does what it think it does (parking the drives), then it seems a bit "harsh"... Usually parking drives requires a reboot for them to come on-line again... No?

Awesome program

Turns out that explorer keeps accessing the drive.

Any way to stop getting Explorer to randomly access the drive if i dont require any files from it? seems like basic common sense. i dont need any files, so dont access the drive XD.

Any ideas?

[Csoszi]

@Csoszi: That seems an interesting way of circumventing some problems... Do you know if the drives power-up again if needed (direct access from Explorer, or from the network)? If so, that could actually be a great idea to add to a WHS machine...

Cheers.

Miguel


P.S.: Btw, if that utility does what it think it does (parking the drives), then it seems a bit "harsh"... Usually parking drives requires a reboot for them to come on-line again... No?

Using Revosleep you can put a non-system disk HDD to standby only manually. Waking up is also manual.
The drive letter of the deactivated HDD disappears from explorer, so no process and program will be able to access it. When 'waking up' the drive manually it's drive letter will reappear. No need to reboot the computer to wake up the 'sleeping' drive again.
It really is a harsh method to sleep the unwanted drive(s), but its guaranteed that nothing can wake the drive up but you.

[__Miguel_]

Awesome program

That's why Microsoft bought the sysinternals domain, and hired the guy behind each and every of those incredible pieces of software, starting with Process Explorer (Task Manager on some seriously potent steroids), and ending with Autoruns (ever wanted to REALLY know what starts with your PC? Now you can), along with probaly the first piece of software written to look for rootkits...

Turns out that explorer keeps accessing the drive.

Well, that can be caused by a number of things.

Usually, the only thing Explorer really needs to do is some routine maintenance at odd times. I've had HDDs powering down for rather long times during gaming sessions (spinning up again is a b****, though, everything freezes...), and only spin up again because the GAME needed data, so that would only account for a couple of spin-ups per hour, at most.

However, Explorer can access the HDD for other reasons. The most important ones are:
1) Viruses;
2) Rootkits;
3) Poorly-written Explorer add-ons, like Antivirus Explorer right-click menus and such.

1) and 2) are somewhat easy to deal with. One of the biggest number 3) hogs I've seen with keeping Explorer accessing just about any drive in the system is the "Single Sign-On" add-on from Intel's Wireless drivers. It replaces gina.dll (part of Explorer responsible for showing the log-on screen), which immediately keeps you from switching users, and periodically accesses EVERY HDD drive letter in the system. Not pretty.

And sometimes AV menus are too tightly integrated with the AV executable, and when you right-click on a file, it tries to check how many partitions are available, which inherently causes a system-wide alert. It's like calling someone on the phone through the intercom in the barracks, just to get one guy to come and pick it up...

I'd start with Autoruns and Process Explorer (you can check each and every open dll and handle for Explorer.exe), and see if there is anything out of the ordinary with Explorer, and adress the cause.

Oh, wait. I just remembered... Do you have indexing systems activated? Those run through explorer (I think), and WILL page every drive (unless you tell it otherwise).

Hope this helps.

@Csoszi: hmmm, if revosleep works like that, I can't use it. I'd need a piece of software that put the drives to sleep, but still keep them visible to Explorer, so they could be accessed later on a file request. Like "spin-down on command". Otherwise it would be a very weird NAS... lol

Cheers.

Miguel

[reddyuday]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread. I recently ran into drive standby issues and found this thread.

procmon (the new filemon) says that Explorer.exe is doing QueryFullSizeInformationVolume operation on my disk partitions. At the moment, it is doing it on every partition of my primary drive once every minute. It is not doing anything to my secondary drive yet, but it might do so in future.

Any idea why Explorer does this?

Uday

[__Miguel_]

Any idea why Explorer does this?

Are you using XPx64, as your signature states? Or is it Vista?

I know from experience that Vista sometimes seems to constantly want to know if anything else has been added to your disk through Indexer and such things. I guess XP with the desktop search pack might tend to mimic that situation.

I'd start by checking file indexing services (File Indexer and Windows Desktop Search), turning them off and seeing if it helps.

I do, however, think it might have something to do with some 3rd-party software code. FI and WDS usually index all fixed NFTS drives on the system, so unless the secondary drive came from another system without indexing features activated for some reason, non-Windows applications embedded into explorer might cause this odd behavior.

Try using File Explorer to check all the handles and files opened by Explorer. If you select the executable file on the list, one of the viewing panes will show all the open DLL files, and hooks to other pieces of software. If something non-M$ is on that list, it might be the cause, especially if it "gina.dll" is involved (it might be Intel's Single Sign-On feature on Intel Wireless NIC drivers, or even a virus).

Hope this helps.

Cheers.

Miguel

[reddyuday]

Actually, it seems to be ok. After closer inspection, I found that the Explorer is also probing the partitions in the secondary drive, but probing them in an unobtrusive way so that they don't spin up. The drive manufacturers and Microsoft seem to understand each other. (On the other hand, the drive manufacturers don't understand speedfan. The way speedfan asks for their temperature makes the drives spin up. How silly!)

Uday

[__Miguel_]

(On the other hand, the drive manufacturers don't understand speedfan. The way speedfan asks for their temperature makes the drives spin up. How silly!)

A little after my reply, I read your other thread on the subject.

Yes, SpeedFan is a long-time known culprit on drives not spinning down. This was discovered during the very long rants about the ED10EACS (and other 1st-gen WD GP drives) excessively high spin-up counts. Those rants were perfectly legit, btw, WD shouldn't have made the head load-unload counter the same as the start/stop counter...

Truth be told, though, that SpeedFan is not really the one to blame here. The culprit is actually S.M.A.R.T.. You see, Windows doesn't actually check S.M.A.R.T. attributes that often (probably only once at startup). If it did, there would be a similar behavior, since S.M.A.R.T. can only be accessed from a non-stopped drive (or at least it's how I assume it works, given the WD GP reports, as well as other people having drives not spin down). And I think the same thing happens in WHS's Advanced Disk Manager Add-In (which actually disables active S.M.A.R.T. data monitoring by default).

I do think, however, that there might be a way to circumvent SpeedFan's "misbehavior". Try checking which temperature is being shown by default on the system tray. I've seen it default to the HDD drive temp a few times, which will prevent it from stopping poling the drive (which I believe happens when you don't have either monitoring part of the software working - i.e., the GUI is minimized, the "Charts" tab has no graphics enabled and the temperature shown in the tray is from anything BUT the HDD).

Cheers.

Miguel

[reddyuday]

Thanks for the info, Miguel. I didn't know that SMART requires that the drives be spinning. I disabled the monitoring of the HD in Speedfan because I am not particularly concerned about its temperature. I have the CPU temperature displayed in the systray. That is the temperature that matters to me.

Uday

[sampo]

Has anyone gotten revosleep to work with Windows 7? Is there a hardware solution for sata power control?

Edit: Found "A Hand Made SATA Hard Drive Switch"

http://www.thesataswitch.com/buy.htm

[__Miguel_]

Edit: Found "A Hand Made SATA Hard Drive Switch"

Interesting device, indeed. Though I'd prefer a "AND/OR" switch, not only an "OR" switch (at least it's what I assume that does, you can have ONE of the single/dual terminations receiving power, not both).

Just make sure you're running at least AHCI on the ports that control the drives to be shut down (keeping in mind that some Intel non-RAID Southbridges lack hot-swap/hot-plug capabilities, even though they actually support ACHI - which is limited to NCQ, basically). If you miss this one, be prepared to have a spontaneous BSOD (or at least Windows will complain about the drives not being there, AND the drives NOT powered up during spin-up will not be available to Windows even after you power them up).

That and be sure to unmount the drives on the OS, or at least disable write caching (though that might come with a performance hit), otherwise you might end up with corrupted/missing data.

Cheers.

Miguel

[JamieG]

Found "A Hand Made SATA Hard Drive Switch"

http://www.thesataswitch.com/buy.htm

Slightly off topic but I wired up something similar to what is described here:

Source: http://www.thesataswitch.com/index.htm

Also, as many people have pointed out, you can use a double-pole double-throw toggle switch if you only want to switch between two drives. You only need to switch the red (5V) and yellow (12V) leads because you don't need to switch the grounds. You just "Y" out each ground wire from the molex power supply connector to each drive.

I used this to connect a storage drive with one switch setting allowing power to flow through a molex connector to sata adapter to power the drive on at boot and the other switch setting being 'off', so the drive wouldn't boot.

The switch is also useful for turning on and off anything else that is molex-powered, such as lights etc.