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    External Hard Drives continously spinning and getting very hot!

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by 72hundred, Mar 14, 2010.

  1. 72hundred

    72hundred Revolutions-Per-Millennia

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    Hey,

    I've got two 1Tb external HD's attached to my system (as in sig). But they spin continuously which gets 'em very hot. Is there anyway of getting w7 to spin them down when they're not in use. Occasionally, TVersity, or some other program needs to access files on the hard drives so I don't mind them spinning up then but there's no need the other 90% of the time. BTW I'm running High Performance mode on the power settings if that helps.

    Cheers,
    72oo
     
    72hundred, Mar 14, 2010
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  2. H.A.L. 9000

    H.A.L. 9000 Occam's Chainsaw

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    Look under the advanced power settings...
     

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    H.A.L. 9000, Mar 14, 2010
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  3. Tinderbox (UK)

    Tinderbox (UK) BAKED BEAN KING

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    Tinderbox (UK), Mar 14, 2010
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  4. 72hundred

    72hundred Revolutions-Per-Millennia

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    Cheers, went there last night and tried setting it to turn off after 10min's.... but by 30min's was still spinning. I'm leaving it on that setting in case there was something else reading that HD I didn't know about.

    Drive power manager - I think I'll give that a go. HD Tune just monitors though I thought?
     
    72hundred, Mar 15, 2010
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  5. H.A.L. 9000

    H.A.L. 9000 Occam's Chainsaw

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    Interesting. About a year ago I replaced all my externals with the WD green drives and I guess it's in the drive firmware that after a certain amount of time of inactivity they stop spinning. I haven't really had anything but them under Windows 7, so I was hoping that would work, but I wonder if that only applies to local drives like on SATA or eSATA connections? What type of external drive do you have?
     
    H.A.L. 9000, Mar 15, 2010
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  6. sean473

    sean473 Notebook Prophet

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    The western digital my books have a similar feature... after a period on inactivity , they stop spinning... only if ur using USB or firewire... might be a great idea to replace your drives with the western digital ones.
     
    sean473, Mar 15, 2010
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  7. Krane

    Krane Notebook Prophet

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    Yes, pray tell?
     
    Krane, Mar 15, 2010
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  8. DetlevCM

    DetlevCM Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Just on a side note ;)

    My external drives on USB do stop spinning too as far as I am aware.

    The Seagate and WD should do...

    Normally all HDDs should stopp spinning after inactivity.
    "Sytem drives" should park their head if not used - but generally there is some writing and reading going on all the time.
     
    DetlevCM, Mar 16, 2010
    #8