How do I stop my DVD-drive from spinning on command?

blunden · Post by **blunden** » Wed May 13, 2009 3:38 pm

I consider my computer silent enough for my needs. However, whenever I have a disc in the DVD-drive and I do something where I get to select a path windows will spin up the dvd to check what it contains. This often results in that the drive keeps the disc spinning for quite some time just in case I was actually going to access that data. Needless to say this is extremely irritating. Is there an application that can tell the drive to stop spinning? Obviously it's possible since some Copy Protections tend to just have the disc spin up slightly and then slow down again in a matter of seconds.

Towermax · Post by **Towermax** » Wed May 13, 2009 4:19 pm

Nero DriveSpeed is a utility that comes with Nero Burning ROM. It might do what you want.

It gives you options for maximum read speed and spin down time. I have my DVD set to read at 8X--that's fast enough for me and keeps things pretty quiet--and to spin down after 16 seconds.

You can set it to spin down as fast as 2 seconds after it finishes a read, but of course when multiple reads are needed it'll keep spinning up and down.

DriveSpeed uses about 5K memory and sits in the system tray, so you can easily access it if you need to change settings for a particular disk.

blunden · Post by **blunden** » Thu May 14, 2009 4:18 am

I'll check that out if it's possible to install it without the rest of the Nero stuff.

Thanks.

thepwner · Post by **thepwner** » Thu May 14, 2009 5:12 am

There actually is a program that can do exactly what you want, stop and start your disc drive from spinning on command. It was intended for video game backing up (not going to get into it now long explanation of why it is needed and crap) but it's called wxStop and it is on gael360.free.fr check it out!

blunden · Post by **blunden** » Thu May 14, 2009 4:20 pm

thepwner wrote:There actually is a program that can do exactly what you want, stop and start your disc drive from spinning on command. It was intended for video game backing up (not going to get into it now long explanation of why it is needed and crap) but it's called wxStop and it is on gael360.free.fr check it out!

I understand what it's for.

I enjoy reading about reverse engineering and hacking, even though I don't have the hardware in question. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work. It didn't stop the drive as far as I could tell (unless it takes a long time).

None of the buttons seemed to work. Is it supposed to work with Vista? If it worked it would be exactly what I wanted though.

thepwner · Post by **thepwner** » Thu May 14, 2009 6:42 pm

I have no clue if it works with vista...you can try running it as administrator or something, also wxripper has the same features in it but it has more like game ripping features, so try wxripper too.

Towermax · Post by **Towermax** » Fri May 15, 2009 6:55 am

There's a German program called CDBremse that was recommended to me a couple of years back. It's now available in English as "CD Throttle". It looks like it does about the same thing as Nero Drive Speed. It's available at Softpedia:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Syst ... emse.shtml

The install program is still in German, but it's standard, so no problem.

alphabetbackward · Post by **alphabetbackward** » Fri May 15, 2009 6:55 am

http://www.cdspeed2000.com/download.html

Nero DriveSpeed 3.0. Nothing else to download.

blunden · Post by **blunden** » Sat May 16, 2009 4:49 am

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions.

I'll try them out later.