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July 31, 2011 7:57 AM Subscribe
How do I keep my primary data drive from constantly going idle and then spinning up again?
I have two hard drives: One that holds my OS partitions and another that's dedicated to plain ol' data storage. The arrangement works out well enough except that whenever I don't access the data drive for a while it goes idle (I can hear it spin down), and then when I want to do almost anything, whether it's watch a video, listen to a song, play a game or click on some links, I have to wait for the hard drive to spin up again. The sound and the wait are both annoying, so I'm looking for a way to get rid of it by keeping the hard drive active.
I'm on IRC a lot and used to be able to keep the hard drive going just by switching on chat-logging so the system would be constantly writing to a text file, but now that gives me an error I can't seem to fix, and I can't find another convenient workaround. Help?
I'm using Windows Vista.
I have two hard drives: One that holds my OS partitions and another that's dedicated to plain ol' data storage. The arrangement works out well enough except that whenever I don't access the data drive for a while it goes idle (I can hear it spin down), and then when I want to do almost anything, whether it's watch a video, listen to a song, play a game or click on some links, I have to wait for the hard drive to spin up again. The sound and the wait are both annoying, so I'm looking for a way to get rid of it by keeping the hard drive active.
I'm on IRC a lot and used to be able to keep the hard drive going just by switching on chat-logging so the system would be constantly writing to a text file, but now that gives me an error I can't seem to fix, and I can't find another convenient workaround. Help?
I'm using Windows Vista.
Response by poster: That option is already set to 20 minutes. It definitely does not take 20 minutes for the disk to spin down. More like two or three.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:37 AM on July 31, 2011
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:37 AM on July 31, 2011
Best answer: If you can't find a more elegant solution NoSleepHD will write an empty text file to your hard drive every few minutes to keep it spinning.
posted by sockpup at 12:28 PM on July 31, 2011
posted by sockpup at 12:28 PM on July 31, 2011
There are two ways a drive can spin down- os-initiated power control, and device-initiated power control. Through Windows, you are probably only affecting whether or not Windows tells the device to spin down. The device has its own timer that is set in the firmware, and can power down on its own, without needing to receive a message from the os.
If you want to adjust the timer in the firmware of your hard drive, you will need special software. On linux, this software is called hdparm-- there is also a version for Windows. It is not very user-friendly, but if you are good at reading documentation, you should be able to manage it. You can adjust a variety of power-saving options, and also noise/performance tradeoffs.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 5:03 PM on July 31, 2011
If you want to adjust the timer in the firmware of your hard drive, you will need special software. On linux, this software is called hdparm-- there is also a version for Windows. It is not very user-friendly, but if you are good at reading documentation, you should be able to manage it. You can adjust a variety of power-saving options, and also noise/performance tradeoffs.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 5:03 PM on July 31, 2011
Response by poster: NoSleepHD does the trick. Thanks!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:27 PM on July 31, 2011
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:27 PM on July 31, 2011
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On my win7 machine: start->control panel->power options->change plan settings->change advanced power settings->hard disk->turn of hard disk after->#minutes
I think you set it to 0 to make it never turn off...or you can just set a high number, like 8 hours, so it should turn off when you sleep, and turn on once per session.
Also...there may be a similar option in your bios, but that's less likely.
posted by Sonic_Molson at 8:18 AM on July 31, 2011