Can I STOP an unused harddrive from within xp-pro?

[woutertal]

I have an old noisy HD on my system that I only use for backups. The high-pitch noise is driving me mad. Is there a way to stop the disk running, without affecting the way my other HD runs? In power options any setting seems to apply to all drives together. Or is the only way to turn it off in BIOS?


My system:

Win XP-Pro, Pentium IV 2,60 GHz, MSI Mobo 850-Max, 512 MB Rimm, 80 GB HD@7200, 16 GB HD@3600. DVB, DVD, CDWR, 17" LCD monitor. 2-puter LAN with shared internet connection via satellite, 1500 kbps down. 128 kbps up (RDSI using 2*64K B-channels). ISP = SatSpeed+. Connection via satellite is assisted with active-prefetching (nothing to do with windows-prefetching). The second comp in my LAN is identical, but P IV @ 2.80 GHz with 256 MB dram.

I thought i'd just state all that since this is only my second post on the forum.

 

[Electronic Punk]

If you are not using it, why not pull the power from the back of it?
(then if necessary get the bios to redect which drives are still there)

is the noisy drive a western digital (just a guess ;p)

 

[woutertal]

I use it periodically for backups, so pulling the plug and putting it back everytime is a bit too much..

No, it's a Samsung

 

[Glaanieboy]

Why not buy an external USB2.0/Firewire bracket? It may cost some money, but then you can plug it in when you need it, and unplug it when you're done

 

[woutertal]

Thanks for the tip, I might have to do that or buy another drive. I was wondering however if there would be some software or command that could stop the drive.. If windows can shut all drives down, it might be able to shut only one down as well..

 

[Electronic Punk]

Well it would still be physically connected and powered so that wouldn't stop the noise.

 

[Glaanieboy]

You can put all harddrives in a sleep state (Power Options in Windows allows you to do that), but I wonder if that can be done for one drive. I'll check that. Hold on.

 

[Glaanieboy]

Hmm, nothing so far found. But it must be possible somehow, will keep looking though.

 

[Xie]

Can't you just disable the drive like you can w/ a cd-rom or any other drive?

 

[Glaanieboy]

Can't you just disable the drive like you can w/ a cd-rom or any other drive?

That would still keep the power running to the device, ie it's still spinning at full speed. CD-ROMs automagically stop spinning after x seconds.

 

[Xie]

That would still keep the power running to the device, ie it's still spinning at full speed. CD-ROMs automagically stop spinning after x seconds.

I thought HD's only spun when being read .. so if you've disabled the drive it wouldn't be read at all? hmm...

 

[canadian_divx]

to do a hot swap it is part of the motherboard, and the software that goes with it, even tho you do not think windows is using a hdd, it still is, it is putting temp data on it and constently checking that it is there. if u want a back up thing i would sugest to go with a Firewire or USB 2 hdd. but it is bad to just unplug the drive. it might cause dammage or if u just unplug it, it might not have time to move the heads into a safe position, and therefor might cause a crash. and that would be bad.