Can I tell Windows when to spin down my drive(s)?

[Ketchup]

Server 2008. Two drives. One OS, one data. All data backed up outside of the machine.

I am looking for ways to keep the data drive on my file/media server from spinning during non-use hours (a.k.a. night time). Less heat and less spin time time on the drive is my line of thinking. I don't want the entire machine to be going in and out of sleep all the time, and it would be nice not to have to long onto the server and run something every night.

I thought possibly task schedule could do it, but I am not readily seeing a command for this.

Right now I am using the power profile to spin down the drive after one hour of inactivity. Works ok, but I am still getting some spin-down/spin-up during the day, which is what I am trying to avoid (longevity of the drive).

Appreciate any input.

 

[JackMDS]

This question appears hundreds of times in many Forums in the last 10 years.

Sadly, I never saw a real answer for it beyond what you are already doing.

 

[quikah]

You can make a nighttime power plan with the disk idle set to 5 minutes, then make a scheduled task (set to run whether logged in or not) to make it active (powercfg -setactive <nightpowerplan>). Then another scheduled task to set the normal power plan active in the morning. The only issue is that it would effect your OS drive also.

You might also look into this utility to see if it works on your system (idle setting doesn't seem to work for me). https://sites.google.com/site/disablehddapm/

 

[Ketchup]

You can make a nighttime power plan with the disk idle set to 5 minutes, then make a scheduled task (set to run whether logged in or not) to make it active (powercfg -setactive <nightpowerplan>). Then another scheduled task to set the normal power plan active in the morning. The only issue is that it would effect your OS drive also.

You might also look into this utility to see if it works on your system (idle setting doesn't seem to work for me). https://sites.google.com/site/disablehddapm/

Thank you. I'll have to play with that.

 

[Elixer]

Less heat and less spin time time on the drive is my line of thinking.

While that is true, it is also true it is more wear & tear on the drive spinning up, rather than just having it spin 24/7.

That said, open up powershell (or create cmdlets) and you can use...
"select disk 4", "offline disk" | diskpart
"select disk 4", "online disk" | diskpart

Then you can run each via a cron job.

 

[Ketchup]

See, that is exactly why I am torn. I used to have a really old IBM machine in the office for a lab where a drive that was probably 20+ years old was running until the day I took the machine offline. I had a drive for my home server that was used for 4 years, then just sitting 99% of the time the year after that, which failed it's last backup. So:

1. they obviously don't make them like they used to
2. I am really torn if it's best to even bother with the spin-down.
3. the hard drive in my sig is about 4 years old, spins down whenever the computer isn't used for ~20 minutes (sleep setting), and is still running fine as it gets accessed daily.

So I don't know.

 

[JackMDS]

I n the last few years while switching old and computers to SSDs I retired IDE and SATA Drives 220 GB to 1 TB that set on a shelve in a Static bags. They were fully functional, about last 2-4 years old, and gently (I.e. no 24/7 RAID Drives) . After sitting a year or two in the bags I tried to reuse them and 6 out of 10 either did not work or died after short use.

I have No explanation for it but I doubt that any factors as mentioned above are part of the problem.

If I want to be paranoid I would say that it looks like the manufacturers put inside a self distract mechanism based on time.



P.S. If one wondered why I wanted to start using them again?

The conundrum of Win 10 "Eternal beta" is so that whenever there is a Major upgrade (like for release 1607 to 1703) I make an Acronis tib files of all my 1607 computers and only then upgrade to 1703.

I wanted to use the old 3.5" HDs just to copy to them the tib files and then put them on the shelve again.

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