Turn off Non-System Hard Drives if/when Not In Use? 4

[kjv1611]

This is just something I've thought about of late, as possibly a way to save a little hard drive spinning as well as a little electricity. It may not even be possible at all.

Does anyone know if there is a way - BIOS, Operating System (Windows Linux, other), hardware firmware, 3rd party app, or whatever, to turn off individual hard drives when they are not in use?

For instance, let's say you've got 6 hard drives in one machine, no RAID, just 6 individual drives. The system drive would need to be running the entire time when use, of course, but what if you don't need to use anything on one or two of the drives for a whole day - or even a few days?

Is this possible to do with internal hard drives at all? I think I've seen it with external drives, but I don't recall seeing it for internal drives.

Thanks for any thoughts/suggestions/information on this idea. It may not be possible at all, but I'm just really curious on this one.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[vacunita]

It comes down to hardware capabilities. I believe certain high end mother board have the ability to turn off selective HD's.

Also HDDLife seems to offer power consumption reduction for HD's

http://www.hddlife.com/eng/features.html

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[BadBigBen]

I've always turned off the build in Windows power scheme, that allow turning off HDD when IDLE, so I would not know if, for instance, that if you access the OS drive if all would wake up or just the OS drive...

from what I have read, this is a per controller setting, means that it would turn on all drives attached to, i.e., ICH10R controller while leaving all drives in sleep on the JMicron controller (P5Q mainboard)...

but take a gander at this:

RevoSpeed

http://revosleep.realspooky.de/

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[kjv1611]

Thanks for the comments so far, and references. I'll take a look at the links later... either this evening or tomorrow hopefully. Sounds like some good info... some I did know, some I did not.. Makes since about the controllers, just never thought about it..

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[smah]

They don't completely turn off, but don't all modern SATA & PATA drives park & spin down after some period of inactivity?

 

[kjv1611]

I'm pretty sure what you're talking about is the power settings under Windows. And I believe that affects all the drives, not just certain ones.

There is one thing I just remembered about a couple of my drives. I've got a couple... either 2 or 3 of the WD Green hard drives. It seems like they'll basically go to sleep on their on, b/c it takes longer to access files on them when I first browse to one of their folders.

And here's a really annoying thing with my current hardware (main system) - if I leave it on long enough that the the system goes to sleep, then when I wake it, I may as well restart the computer if I'm working with any files on the data drives. The reason is that apparently one of the SATA controllers on the mainboard just don't want to wake up. Of course, that really isn't that big a deal, particularly since I don't normally leave the machine running unless I'm working on something.

Didn't get a chance to look at the references last night. I'll try to look some time today.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[FredWagner]

I use a Buffalo LANstation NAS drive at home - it's default configuration is to stop the drive after a period of non-use. If you click on a folder on the drive, it spins up and responds. It's on the family LAN, so it can be reached by any wired or wirelss PC in the house...

Fred Wagner

 

[kjv1611]

Yeah, a NAS setup like that would be very convenient for many applications. However, for the application I'm talking about, the best setup would be for internal hard drives, or perhaps eSata hard drives for the best performance possible. The reason I say this is I use the machine in question for various different uses. Granted, I don't depend upon it as much as I used to, as I now have a powerful laptop I can do some things on as well.

But a NAS is something that's been on my "wish" list for some time, or at least a condider wishing for list... LOL

Thanks for the thought relating to the topic, however, b/c if a NAS were found fast enough, as well as well enough within budget at the time, it could be a good alternative actually... And it is ALSO something I've been thinking about for use at my church, for sending the captured audio/video files and/or archives of those files.

Anyway, now I've got to go do some digging around again, b/c it seems like I HAVE seen where the speed can be worthwhile... and now that's got my mind thinking of yet some other possibilities... LOL doggone tek-tips!

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me