Does second HD spin when unused?

[izit]

Hey, I am considering a SSD for a quiet pc build and wondered if my second hard drive would spin at all while I'm not using it as long as I don't put any drivers or services on it?
Thanks!

 

[rpstewart]

The power options can be set to spin it down after X many minutes of inactivity. It will take a few seconds to spin up once you do access it though.

 

[izit]

That didn't seem to work, and even when I make drive 'offline' in computer management or unplug the SATA wire it still spins?

 

[Efour]

what rpstewart said...power options but hmmm?!

 

[izit]

I put on '2 mins power off HD' after 2 mins I can hear and feel it spinning. I pull Sata out and wait another 2 mins and it's still spinning. I have a lot of drives so looking for another option than to have to plug or unplug their power every time I want to use the drives.

 

[rpstewart]

If you disconnect the data cable it will stay spinning - the spin down signal comes down the data cable.

The drive will only spin down if it isn't being accessed - that's very different from not having anything important on it. Search indexing, virus scanning, all sorts of things could be accessing the disk.

 

[izit]

hanks for replies, 1 has my old windows xp and the other just media such as videos and music so I'm pretty sure nothing is being used on the HD. I don't even use installed anti viruses and disabled everything I could find in startup and services and all drives are still spinning.

 

[el Kuarlos]

which hd is it? I use os and apps from ssd and hd only gets activated when i manage data, torrent or play games, I notice it spinning up when i first do these things, samsing 1tb f3, win7

 

[izit]

It's f3 with windows, samsung sp250 and seagate 500.
On windows7 they all continue to spin untill the main hard drive sleeps.
But on my other windows xp PC they go to sleep after about 20 mins at same time as monitor even though I set it to 3 min, then when I move mouse it starts spinning again even with nothing running.

 

[Phal]

Youll need to check which Power/Performance profile is configured on your computer. High performance will leave drives spinning 24/7 where as other profiles will spin them down after set periods of time. You can also configure your own personal power profiles if need be.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Change-create-or-delete-a-power-plan-scheme

 

[izit]

I've tried on Balanced and Power Saver, I use custom in balanced usually but i've still had no luck in getting them to go standby.

 

[kona786]

if you have speedfan or other temp software running on the hardrive it will keep it awake.

 

[izit]

Well a fresh install on IDE instead of AHCI mode worked.