I'm currently running with a system whose integrated SATA controller as well as it's PCI-based SATA and SCSI controllers support power management and am currently using drives which also have power management support and thus can be spun down at command when I tell my system to sleep.
For my main drives and my RAID, I don't really need to spin the drives down but for my additional 2tb drive which my main disks are backed up to, it would be nice if I could have it not spinning when it's not synchronizing itself with my main disks. It makes the drive last a lot longer.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to easily tell the system to spin the drive down. All I know is that if the system goes to sleep, it will spin it down.
Are there any quick and dirty applications that let you spin down individual drives or is there an option in XP to spin down a selected disk?
"quick and dirty applications"?
If the drive is inactive and the motherboard/drive support the technology then it should by default power itself down when inactive for so long.
[url]http://hdparm-win32.dyndns.org/hdparm/[/url]
This does what you want, I tested it on Windows 7 x64, works fine.
[QUOTE=MIPS;26219415] It makes the drive last a lot longer.[/QUOTE]
I don't think so. As I recall some Google study said it makes little difference how much the drives are used. I would have thought spinning up/down would cause more wear than having it just spin round idle. The only real reason to spin a disk down is power saving.
Most disk failures in my experienced are due to various components failing, spinning the disk down does not reduce wear on these parts so there is no real advantage to stopping the disk.
[QUOTE=Chryseus;26246163]Most disk failures in my experienced are due to various components failing, spinning the disk down does not reduce wear on these parts so there is no real advantage to stopping the disk.[/QUOTE]
Are you sure?
I would of expected that running a disk for an hour monthly would cause a notably longer life out of the drive. If it's failing because of heat stress that's the fault of the engineers who made the drive control PCB but that's replaceable. The entire sealed disk assembly isn't.
Also, how old is that program? Feb 24, 2007? It only specified IDE control. Not SCSI or SATA.
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