Software to spin down hdd

Joe42

Joe42

Joe42

Soldato
Joined
18 Jan 2005
Posts
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I'm looking for some software to allow me to spin down my harddisks individually.

Windows power management can do it for all drives but not for individual drives.

I've got one drive in a silent enclosure and i want to spin the other two down to reduce nosie at certain times. I can open the case an unplug them but i would rather be able to do it from within windows.

Searching around i've found references to a program called hdd sleep but i can't seem to find it.

Any ideas?
 
Clarkey said:
im not sure, but you deffinatly shouldnt be unplugging them while they are on :eek:
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They are sata, which is hot-plugable. I'm not sure if its ok to unplug the power tho, but i do it with molex connectors and i haven't fried anything yet... ;)
 
Joe42 said:
They are sata, which is hot-plugable. I'm not sure if its ok to unplug the power tho, but i do it with molex connectors and i haven't fried anything yet... ;)
Click to expand...

That is misleading.... whilst SATA drives have the capability of being hot-pluggable, several other conditions must also be true. The specific make of drive needs to support it directly (not all do), the OS and the controller must also support it (not all do), and the power (SATA power connector - not Molex) and data cables need to be disonnected simultaneously. That is best achieved with a caddy.

Sure, you might get away with it for a while without apparent data corruption, just as I might get away with dropping lighted matches down the back of the sofa without starting a fire... Neither is a good plan though.
 
Clarkey said:
well it seems I was right all along then doesnt it ;)
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No.
Sata is hot-swapable on all sata devices i have encountered so far. It is a hot-swapable interface.

Sata devices will appear in the 'Safely remove hardware' box and you should use this to disconnect them before unplugging them to prevent data corruption. However this is the same as usb memory sticks and i've never damaged one of those through not disabling it before unplugging it. Sata has been designed to be hot-swapable so i would think its very unlikely to cause data corruption.

And i don't think there is a need to unplug power at the same time because unplugging the data cable will spin down the drive, so unplugging the power after that should be ok.
 
Joe42 said:
Sata devices will appear in the 'Safely remove hardware' box and you should use this to disconnect them before unplugging them to prevent data corruption. However this is the same as usb memory sticks and i've never damaged one of those through not disabling it before unplugging it.
Click to expand...

I've killed several, if it's not finished tranfering data (windows often lies with it's file transfer info) it can corrupt the whole drive. I've got a data stick and an SD card that I can't do anything with, I can't format them, use them in cameras etc and whenever I try accessing them in windows it crashes everything :(
 
Joe42 said:
No.
Sata is hot-swapable on all sata devices i have encountered so far. It is a hot-swapable interface.

Sata devices will appear in the 'Safely remove hardware' box and you should use this to disconnect them before unplugging them to prevent data corruption. However this is the same as usb memory sticks and i've never damaged one of those through not disabling it before unplugging it. Sata has been designed to be hot-swapable so i would think its very unlikely to cause data corruption.

And i don't think there is a need to unplug power at the same time because unplugging the data cable will spin down the drive, so unplugging the power after that should be ok.
Click to expand...

No SATA machine i've ever used has shown up drives in 'safely remove hardware', for arguements sake if it did, you really do want to 'safely remove' it before disconnecting because a hard disk will CERTAINLY be using write-caching, something which USB sticks wont use and is why you can unplug them without unmounting.
Let me know when your crazy technique has led to HD failure will you :p
 
i believe it depends entirely on the motherboard/drives capabilities...

my Raptor and Barracuda are hotswappable for example, but on my old Gigabyte boards they're not... also for some reason on my mates ASUS A8N-SLi it doesn't work...

however on my LanParty SLi-D i get the little add and remove hardware for the drives.
 
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