power management

[ulao]

I have about 4 drives I use in a windows 7 system. For what ever reason win7 can not spin them down. I found software that will do this but its manual. I can't seem to find a suitable product that does this. Is there anything out there that will allow me to schedule a drive to spin down (i.e no activity for 15 minutes ).

[einstein9]

THE QUESTION is always WHY?

[ulao]

I dont quite follow? You want to know why I want to power manage my drives?

If so , I guess that is a fair question. If my reasoning is faulty please explain why...

I have a few large drives in my system, one os drive ( 500 gb ) two 2.0 tb drives, and one 3 tb drive. This is currently the case but in the past it was smaller with more drives. I started to notice the life span of my drives was about 3 years. Personally, in the past, I get a lot longer from a drive. So I figured is was time to read up. The biggest culprit I read was the heat. Looked like I was running these drive at 58c at times. So I did some case ventilation and now I have them running at 43c. The next biggest "no no" if you will was the constant drive use. I dont really use these drive all the time and there really is no reason to have them spinning. It was suggested that the spinning on any moving device will ware things down, simple law of physics here. For example, rebooting an os over and over is not necessarily a good idea for an extended period of time. Thus, I figure it would be in my best interest to let my drive rest. Is this wrong IYO?

[fzabkar]

If you drives support APM, then you could use hdparm or QuietHDD.

http://sites.google.com/site/quiethdd/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hdparm/

[ulao]

hdparm seems to be a src release. However I'm used to compiling projects, I never really do it from a make file outside of avr programming. I dont currently have an ide on this system so I guess its not going to work for me.

I tried out QuietHDD before but it does not seem to allow a drive selection or a time setting.

[fzabkar]

"This directory contains binary packages of the Windows (2000, XP, 2003) version of hdparm":
http://hdparm-win32.dyndns.org/hdparm/

I don't know if the above binaries are suitable for Win 7.

[ulao]

Well its command line, but thing a scheduled task can not handle. I'll see if win7 likes it, thx!

[einstein9]

ulao

u have 2 problems here since ur drives doesn`t stand long

1- those 2TB drives if u leave it for long and i mean longer than 4-6h working will be over heated and u will need to cool it down for longer life

2- PSU, should have a good unit like for example ThermalTake with higher Watt. to have stable power going on.

me personally never power-off my PC always ON and with good cooling fan for the HDD`s never had problems with it. up-time is more than 3-4 months which i think u never got to that

but try to get good powerful PSU + colling ur drives

thats all

and no need to spin drives down this will reduce the life time of ur drive if used for long

and finally good luck

[ulao]

einstein9, thx so much for offering your advice. Having just a bit of difficulty understanding some of your tips.

1- those 2TB drives if u leave it for long and i mean longer than 4-6h working will be over heated and u will need to cool it down for longer life

Currently I keep them running at 43c with HD cooling fans. I have a 800 watt PSU that has no problems supping them. My system must be up 24/7 as well. the drives are not always in use and from what I gather you suggest it is ok to let them spin?

Would there be any advantage spinning them down at all? If I spun them down they would be down for up to 1 week at times. The system never sleeps and I have had up times well over 3 months. If there is no need for this, I shall rest my quest