hard drives always spin / network storage

[Antec1200]

Hi. Do internal hard drives not being accessed inside the tower case, power up & spin when PC is on?

I have several hard drives in my tower & some in external hard drive enclosures. It's getting annoying & confusing. And I don't want all my hard drives spinning if they're not being accessed. To organize my files better i am interested in buying network storage like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822219006

Your thoughts please. Thank you.

PS. I'm new to network storage. Would that be a good choice even for a basic user like me, who does not upload files to others?
http://redirect.anandtech.com/r?url...duct.aspx?Item=N82E16822219006&user=u00000687

 

[KingFatty]

For a PC, my understanding is you can set the power-down time for the entire PC, so that each hard drive would try to spin down after that amount of idle time. I don't like how you can't set one spin down time for one drive, and another spin down time for another drive. It's all-or-nothing for the settings under Windows 7.

When the PC is turned on, all drives would spin up.

There are some hard drives, like the ones marketed as slower-spinning "green" drives, that will spin-down on their own, even if the PC/controller hasn't instructed them to. I think those kind of drives are good for external enclosures that can't be commanded by a PC to spin down based on the PC settings, or other "dumb" system where you could save power even if you leave the drive turned on all the time.

For the NAS system you linked to, I don't know its specifics, but I would guess it can be configured with its own spin down time to control its own drives, regardless of whether the drive is normal or green etc.

I don't know if a PC can command an external USB drive/enclosure to spin down its drive, but perhaps that depends on the external drive and how it's set up to interact with USB. I'm hoping to just spur some ideas for discussion, as I'm not an expert in storage systems/drives.