Power options and hard disks

Vertigo · 30 Sep 2010 at 21:48

Can someone explain something to me?

On laptops/netbooks, you can configure the power options to shut down the hard disk after a period of inactivity, which is sensible. My question is, on an OS like Windows 7, the hard drive never seems to stop being accessed, as even if no foreground application is using it, Windows seems to sieze the opportunity to do indexing or other internal maintainance.

I've configured mine to power down the disk after five minutes but I've left it untouched for longer than this and the drive is still spinning. Am I missing something? Does the drive ever spin down?

TheVoice · 1 Oct 2010 at 10:38

Not really, no. I've had the system disk spin down in XP a few times before, but that was very rare in itself. In Vista and Win7, it never seems to happen. My other storage drive does get turned off though.

Vertigo · 1 Oct 2010 at 12:03

More epic fail from MS then. If they're going to design OSes which never allow the drive to idle, what on earth is the point in putting such an option in the power management settings :rolleyes:

RomeoS · 1 Oct 2010 at 12:37

Perhaps there is a background task still accessing the disk? AV? Have a look at Resource Monitor > Disk.

I have mine set to spin down after 15mins of inactivity. If I move the mouse, you can hear it give off a very faint whir as it spins back up.

Running Windows 7 Professional on a Dell Studio XPS 16

Vertigo · 1 Oct 2010 at 22:15

No background processes that I can see, just seems to be Windows itself continually prodding the disk for whatever reason.

As for yours spinning up when you move the mouse - that just smacks of more MS fail to me. If the disk has powered off I'd expect it to stay that way until you actually access it, not merely move the mouse

RomeoS · 2 Oct 2010 at 11:29

Moving mouse = I want to use the laptop

If I don't move the mouse then the whole laptop enters standby after 30mins.

Could perhaps be superfetch constantly accessing the disk? or Indexing Service?

Try turning off Indexing and see if it helps.

EDIT

Googling a bit, it seems like its a pretty common problem and no one has yet identified what causes it. :confused: