How to set hard drive to spin down after a set time ?

[TerraNova]

How to set a hard drive to spin down after a set time of inactivity? I have seen seagate external drive spin down if no activity to the drive. I wonder if all drives be set do to that? Thanks.

[pcimage]

I suspect that's more a feature of the external enclosure, more than the drive itself.

[TerraNova]

hi Sean, i took the drive out and connect to normal IDE and to my surprise the drive sleep/spin down when no activity for 5-10 minutes....

[DRNJ]

I think your operating system is sending it the command to turn the motor off.
Try hooking just the power cable to it and see what it does.

[TerraNova]

I connected just the power itself, no IDE connected does the same thing, power itself off when no activity , the drive is in perfect working order.

I was just wondering whether this seagate free agent comes with a special command built in.

Thanks

[Doomer]

it is special ATA command - Power Management; User can set timer for that command and HDD will spin down after this time automatically
You can change PM timer with HDDScan

[TerraNova]

Thank's Doomer, MHDD or HDDSCAN? I checked hddscan has no feature for PM settings.

[Doomer]

Thank's Doomer, MHDD or HDDSCAN? I checked hddscan has no feature for PM settings.

HDDScan
it has PM features on IDE features tab
If you cannot see IDE features tab for you ddrive in HDDScan v2.8 that means you drive connected to PCI controller and Windows recognized the drive as "SCSI" drive. You need to connect drive to onboard controller and do not use AHCI settings

[TerraNova]

thank's Doomer

[arbalest]

Ah, this post was just what I was looking for.

I have a Maxtor Diamond Plus 9 and a Seagate Barracuda each
in it's own external USB box in front of me right now. I down
loaded and ran HDDscan and was able to set the Idle Timer
for the Maxtor. And it works.

However, there is no IDE features tab when I select the Segate.

[arbalest]

Hmmm, swapped the drives in the two external USB boxes and
the "problem" stayed with the box, not the drive.

In case anyone is interested - the box that did NOT show the
IDE Features tab is a Vantec NexStar2. The box that does
show the tab is a CoolMax NAS (both USB and NAS).

Now I just wonder what the long term trade offs are between
more rest (shorter idle time interval) and the additional start/stop
cycles that result.

[arbalest]

Another follow-up. When setting the spin-down time with
HDDscan that setting seems to only persist while the drive
is powered up. Cycling the power returns the drive to not
having a spin-down time.

So this setting is not stored on the drive itself either on
the disk or a chip on the PCB? If so, Windows has to
write the APM info to the drive every time the machine
is powered up (or rebooted)?

Can someone confirm this?

[Doomer]

Another follow-up. When setting the spin-down time with
HDDscan that setting seems to only persist while the drive
is powered up. Cycling the power returns the drive to not
having a spin-down time.
So this setting is not stored on the drive itself either on
the disk or a chip on the PCB? If so, Windows has to
write the APM info to the drive every time the machine
is powered up (or rebooted)?

If you talking about spin-down time in PowerManager timer the answer is yes. That timer works only during the power-cycle. After power cycle timer need to be set again
APM feature (which is not PM or PowerManager) value has strored into drive's firmware and you don't need to re-set it again after power cycle

[arbalest]

Years ago when I posted my comments I was able to
set my "data" drive to spin down after some period of
none use while the C: was set to never spin down.

I just moved both drives to a newer machine and I
can't seem to get that configuration again.

The power management settings via the control panel
apply to both drives. When I run HDDscan I can move
the slider for the spin down time but if I do anything
else the slider just gets reset.

The advanced power options are disabled. Frustrating
as I did this with the same drives and same s/w once
before and it worked. Any suggestions?