Secondary SATA drive keeps going to sleep

[Heeter]

Hi all,

I am wondering how to keep my secondary SATA awake.

My primary SATA holds my OS, and Secondary SATA holds my files.

Looks like the power options in control panel only addresses the primary drive.

This is for a Windows7 machine.



Thanks


Heeter

 

[ElementalDragon]

Hmm.... i was under the impression that it WAS the power options that controlled whether or not the hard drives go into standby when idle for too long. Maybe a BIOS setting?

Why do you need it to stay on, anyway?

 

[LeeJend]

I've seen this before and I do not think the secondary HDD spooling down could be stopped from the "energy" settings. I'll poke around a little and see if I find anything.
You probbaly know these already but just in case...

It also gave me an idea. You could write a tiny program that goes out and reads your secondary HDD every minute or so to keep it alive. I'd write an empty text file set to "replace" to the disk. If you just read the disk it might pull out of cache and not keep the disk active.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5435429_keep-hard-drive-going-sleep.html

Elemental - there is a couple seconds delay to spin up the drive if it spools down. I've run into this putting my cache on the secondary and it was a real nuisance.

 

[Heeter]

Thanks guys for your replies.

I have my Windows 7 Libraries folders pointed to this secondary drive, so everything goes into this drive automatically.

Although I can live with calling up a simple text document from this drive and wait for it to spool up.

The main two problems are:

1- Waiting for my games to load is an excruciating long time because the saved games folder has been defaulted to the libraries folder. I get up and do other stuff while the secondary HDD has to wake to feed to game it's saved settings.

2- Windows 7 internal backup fails because the secondary HDD goes to sleep while backing up happens. I backup once a week onto a RAID'ed external USB HDD enclosure. I try to backup both the main HDD and the secondary HDD. I have yet to be successful with this setup. I always wake up in the morning and the backup has failed.

Thanks for that link, Leejend, will check that out right away.


Heeter

 

[American Zombie]

Maybe create a task in task scheduler that accesses that drive on a regular basis.

 

[LeeJend]

The link I posted points to a program that calls and writes an empty file to a HDD you select.

 

[American Zombie]

Uses 30 or more MB of ram too.

 

[Heeter]

Hmm, testing it out now. It is running at 10MB, not 30.

Where would I find a script for this task? Never used that feature before. Do you know how to write a script for this?

I am looking the MS Technet Scriptcenter website, there is nothing that fits bill that I can see.

Thanks AZ.


Heeter

 

[dreamliner77]

Is it possible that your secondary drive is a Green or Low Power drive? If so, these drives are programmed to go to sleep when not in use. There are tools from the manufacturer to change this behavior.