Turn off a internal hard drive via software?

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I have two Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TBs in my case (NZXT Phantom Enthusiast Full Tower). One of them is making a light humming noise which waves in and out. I want to figure out which drive is causing this so I can replace it.

Is there a way I can turn off the drive in windows 7? I know I can just take the side of my case off and unplug the sata connectors but it will be easier for me this way. I have a few internals and I just want to turn off the Samsung Spinpoint F3s to verify which one is making the noise.
 
not that im aware of. once its plugged in, its on!

Have you checked to see if the sound is being caused by vibration though? If its not vibration i would backup any data you have on the drive before it goes crunch!
 
Set the power saving options in Windows to spin down the drives after x minutes of inactivity, wait for the drives to spin down then just navigate through each drive in turn (you may need to go deep into the drive to find something that hasn't been cached and hence will power the drive back up) until you find the culprit.

FWIW I have the same drives and they are very buzzy, I silenced them by using Hirens BootCD to get to the Samsung drive utility where I set the AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) to maximum, this slows the drive down but cuts out the noise, I get very little buzzing now.
 
BloodyL said:
Set the power saving options in Windows to spin down the drives after x minutes of inactivity, wait for the drives to spin down then just navigate through each drive in turn (you may need to go deep into the drive to find something that hasn't been cached and hence will power the drive back up) until you find the culprit.

FWIW I have the same drives and they are very buzzy, I silenced them by using Hirens BootCD to get to the Samsung drive utility where I set the AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) to maximum, this slows the drive down but cuts out the noise, I get very little buzzing now.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I'll give this a shot. I used software already to do that, but can you provide me a direct link to Samsung drive's utility? Thanks.

EDIT: Nvm, I re-read what you said. I've used software to do this already which helped a bit.
 
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I dont get it. why cant you just unplug it? You would know which drive is causing the problem by now.
BTW, it could just be the holder thats holding the HDD making the buzzing noise. Had that problem with mine. Refit the tray and now all is well
 
WuMyster said:
I dont get it. why cant you just unplug it? You would know which drive is causing the problem by now.
BTW, it could just be the holder thats holding the HDD making the buzzing noise. Had that problem with mine. Refit the tray and now all is well
Click to expand...

My cabling at the back is quite a mess. I plan to back up my data and switch them out with new drives sometime soon. Hmm, I will try refitting the tray and see if that helps.
 
You can't do "off". You can do "spin down", which stops it making noise and drops power consumption to almost zero. I used hdparm.

edit: maybe sdparm, difficult to remember which
 
I wonder if you can disable it via the BIOS?

Id like to do this for my backup drives as i only access them once a month
 
Just popped open the case, cleaned my filters quickly and installed a 1.5TB WD I've had sitting around for a while. I swapped the 1TB Samsung from the first bay and re-installed it into the second. First bay now has a 2TB Seagate/1.5TB WD drive in it. The vibration/humming is pretty much almost gone. I can hear it very faintly now (sure it's still annoying when it's pretty much silent in this room/my OCD goes over the top and thinks it's higher).
 
should enable it,the f3's supposed to be quiet drives

some rubber mounted screws would help reduce any vibration
 
they are quiet in the sense of a lack of clicking and what not, but they still vibrate like mad, just all mechanical hdds. Why I let most of my drives spin down after 20 minutes since storage/recording drives arent needed very often.
One isnt normally enough to hear unless your next to it, but they are far from silent if you cant use rubber screws as they are in backplanes and you have 11 of them :/

Rubber screws, or HDD silencers are the way forward if you want silence. Or a silent case, which just comes with it built in.
 
I still think its your bracket that is causing the noise. None of my hard drives make any vibrating noises. They're silent from literally 5cm away.
 
Agreed, only a couple of drives should be whisper quiet, not that they are the quietest drives on the market though. Silent PC rate them as a 7 (10 being no vibration at all) adn the airborne acoustics at 15.5 at idle going up to 18-19 under load (dBA@1m). WD 1.5tb caviers greens are rated as a 9 with 13 and 14 idle/seek noise.

If I test one drive suspended, or rubber screws in my tj-07 I cant hear it. Stick it in the old Thermaltake Kandalf which uses rubbish clips as well, and I can hear it easily, at least until the graphics card gets used lol. All the vibration seems to just transfer straight to the case, and rivets instead of screws makes that travel throughout the case.
 
Complately forgot that my brackets have rubber bits that go into the HDD.
This must be the reason why we're not hearing vibrations. I remember that I ran out of brackets so just placed a HDD down onto the bottom surface and the whole case vibrated. It caused the doors to vibrate which created such a loud noise.
I also run 7 different branded drives so the rubber grommets definitely help
 
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