Quick SSD question

rhys j · Post by **rhys j** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 7:45 am

If I get a 30 GB SSD for the operating system and commonly used program files, and use my Spinpoint F3 for music / movies / game installations, can/will Windows 7 power off the storage drive whenever I'm not using those particular files?

theycallmebruce · Post by **theycallmebruce** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:58 am

If you have configured it in your power profile, yes. The idle time until power down for hard disks is configurable in Windows. Go into the control panel and take a look.

rhys j · Post by **rhys j** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:15 am

So if I set the hard drive to power off after 1 minute, is that 1 minute after that particular hard drive was accessed, or is it 1 minute after any system activity? And will it do it on a drive-by-drive basis?

Also in practical terms, will it stay off or will programs like the indexing service or antivirus software keep waking it up?

syrian_gamer · Post by **syrian_gamer** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:31 am

rhys j wrote:So if I set the hard drive to power off after 1 minute, is that 1 minute after that particular hard drive was accessed, or is it 1 minute after any system activity? And will it do it on a drive-by-drive basis?

Also in practical terms, will it stay off or will programs like the indexing service or antivirus software keep waking it up?

thats a very interesting question. I had previously set my windows XP machine to turn of my second drive when ever it wasnt in use (its 500gb drive filled with videos, so i rarely use it) regardless, explorer kept accessing the drive

If windows 7 is smarter about this then ill probably buy a SSD for my OS and just put everything else on a massive drive

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:24 pm

It is certainly supposed to be on a drive-by-drive basis, otherwise drives would never get shut down in practise. If Windows is still accessing the drive, there may be reasons for it such as Indexing or System Restore.

ascl · Post by **ascl** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 5:05 pm

Just be careful of running monitoring software which checks HDD temps (including speedfan), as they can, and will, wake the drive from sleep.

Spirit02 · Post by **Spirit02** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 11:30 pm

Running W7 RC x64, and quite often the only time my movies drive spins up is when I open up My Computer and it tries to get a figure on how full the drive is. (Other than watching a movie of course

)

rhys j · Post by **rhys j** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 8:41 am

Spirit02 wrote:Running W7 RC x64, and quite often the only time my movies drive spins up is when I open up My Computer and it tries to get a figure on how full the drive is. (Other than watching a movie of course )

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know.

I also read a suggestion somewhere which said you could disable a drive using Device Manager, which would presumably work, bit of a hassle though.

defaultluser · Post by **defaultluser** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 11:10 pm

rhys j wrote:
Spirit02 wrote:Running W7 RC x64, and quite often the only time my movies drive spins up is when I open up My Computer and it tries to get a figure on how full the drive is. (Other than watching a movie of course )
Thanks, that's what I wanted to know.

I also read a suggestion somewhere which said you could disable a drive using Device Manager, which would presumably work, bit of a hassle though.

No need to do that. I just installed Windows 7, and my data drive is almost never spinning because everything I use is installed on my SSD. I also left indexing enabled, and it's still not spinning-up the disk.

This is using the default desktop power profile with zero tweaks, so you don't hae to do anything, as the OS is already configured to be aggressive about spinning-down disks.