What could this be????

Faustus · 22 Apr 2007 at 15:12

I have a puzzle, not a fault, and as the puzzle could be anyone of a number of things I hadn't a clue which forum it should go in, so if anyone does know the answer and I'm posting in the wrong forum than apologies in advance. Over the last couple of months I've upgraded or added a number of components to my existing PC which is a 3.0G P4, 2 gig of Ram, ATi graphics etc. I have installed a new Radeon X1300 (not a games player) which has it's own fan (previous ATi card did not have a fan) along with a second HD 160 gig which is slave to a new 250 gig HD, plus MS Vista Home Premium. The puzzle is this - when the PC has been running for 10 to 15 mins I hear an electronic switch activate within the tower and a noise of something shutting down, could be a fan but haven't noticed a drop in case noise levels. The sound is very similar to the noise the PC makes for real when it is actually shutting down or going to sleep. I simply wondered what piece of hardware this could be e.g. is it the fan on the graphics card, is it the slave drive, or is it the case fan? I'm sure it never occurred prior to these upgrades. Any ideas anyone???? :confused:

rpstewart · 22 Apr 2007 at 15:23

It could well be the second hard drive spinning down to save power. Check the power options in control panel and see what they're set to.

It won't be a fixed time after booting the PC because the timer operates on time after the last access.

Cob · 22 Apr 2007 at 16:40

rpstewart said:
It could well be the second hard drive spinning down to save power.

Agreed. Vista seems to do this automatically.

hp7909 · 22 Apr 2007 at 16:45

Mine does that a-lot after system comes out of hibernate. Don't know why since I have that feature disabled, but thats fetal Vista for you

Faustus · 23 Apr 2007 at 22:13

rpstewart said:
It could well be the second hard drive spinning down to save power. Check the power options in control panel and see what they're set to.

It won't be a fixed time after booting the PC because the timer operates on time after the last access.

I will check the power options when I get a minute, using my Laptop at present which is XP. I read with interest though that others have noticed the same phenomenon and that it does appear to be the second slave drive spinning down, which is what I suspected too.