2.5" hard drives designed to ignore power settings and spin down?

[pman6]

Are 2.5" hdd's designed to spin down even if you set Windows to make it never spin down?

I just bought a 2.5" WD Blue wd10jpvx as a second internal drive in my laptop, and even though Windows power settings set the hdd's to never spin down, this WD Blue still spins down after about a minute and a half.

I would prefer it stay spinning while laptop is plugged in.

 

[dma0991]

WD Blue should not have a very aggressive power down state. Even if they do, a minute and half is insanely short for any HDD, 2.5" or 3.5". Try looking for utilities that are supposed to disable idle states, particularly ones for WD Green.

 

[fzabkar]

Some HDDs have aggressive APM settings. APM can be disabled in some WD models by using WD's wdidle utility. Otherwise there is idle3ctl, the open source Linux version.

If these don't work, then try quietHDD.

 

[corkyg]

Don't look to Windows PM - check your laptop's power management settings. Example, in Lenovo Thinkpads, that is a separate utility - the toolbox connected to the "blue" button. I suspect other OEMs have similar arrangements.

 

[pman6]

I just researched this last night, and WD green drives have an 8 second spin down time out !

Fortunately this is a storage drive. I suppose I could get used to the spindown

 

[natto fire]

Don't look to Windows PM - check your laptop's power management settings. Example, in Lenovo Thinkpads, that is a separate utility - the toolbox connected to the "blue" button. I suspect other OEMs have similar arrangements.

Came to post this, and I can vouch Samsung does. Even my desktop had a power scheme titled "AsRock instant boot" that even though it said it should never sleep it always would. I switched it to a different one to fix the problem.

 

[Cerb]

I just researched this last night, and WD green drives have an 8 second spin down time out !

No, that's head parking, no spinning down.

 

[dma0991]

I just researched this last night, and WD green drives have an 8 second spin down time out !

Fortunately this is a storage drive. I suppose I could get used to the spindown

8 seconds should be head parking. 8 seconds for a complete spin down is absurd, I own 3 WD Greens and they don't spin down that quick, more like its triggered by 5-10 minutes of inactivity. But compared against other HDDs, they do spin down quicker, compared against my Samsung F4EG.

It does get annoying at times when you'd have to wait a couple of seconds for it to spin up but if you have an active program that is constantly accessing it, the problem becomes less apparent. If you don't, then it isn't hard either to get used to its minor quirk.

 

[corkyg]

I have never had a laptop HDD spin down unless I power down. That goes back to 1993.

 

[energee]

No, that's head parking, no spinning down.

My first thought was that the original poster might be confusing the two, which would seem more plausible.

 

[pman6]

all my other laptop hdd's do not spin down if i set it in windows.
Toshiba, seagate.

But these WD's have it built into their firmware, I learned.

I can confirm that this WD Blue spins down in under 2 minutes, because if I try to read or write right at the 2 minute mark, I can hear it spin up.

The WD Green drives probably spin down even sooner than that. I know someone who confirms his Scorpio black spins down in 2 minutes too.

 

[Cerb]

1-2 minutes can be corroborated, sadly, with newer drives. They're trying to squeeze out battery life, it seems. You could always be evil and make a script that touches a file every so many seconds... I'm not sure how you'd disable APM in Windows.

 

[Accord99]

For Windows, try CrystalDiskInfo, I use it disable the auto spin down of an external Seagate drive that I'm using internally.

It's under Function->Advanced Feature->AAM/APM Control.