Is it possible to turn on/off a storage HDD at will

To treat it like a glorified USB key. The idea is that an HDD does not take kindly to rough transportation when turned on, and it's always uncomfortable to imagine it suffering whenever I haul my laptop from one room to the next, shove it in my backback while the computer is merely in sleep mode, or when subjecting it to the bed treatment. Whereas if it's not spinning, even shocks shouldnt be more of a problem than they are for SSDs right?

On another note, am I right to think that this would also save up on battery life, and reduce noise (I can perceive a slight whine when my ears are close to the laptop)?

 

It is unclear how you are treating the lappy when moving from room to room. For example, I keep mine in a horizontally oriented position and flat as possible when moving it from room to room. Or I may have it in a lazy boy, slightly rocking to and fro. And with all this normal movement, never had a problem as the drives are built to withstand this type of treatment.

Note, I don't slam things around or flip them in the air end over end to shove them in a bag while turned on.

However once the machine is hibernating, asleep, or turned off, all the drives should have parked their drive heads (unless you configured something differently), so you should be able to move the lappy around without worry.

If it is that much of a concern, you should look at moving stuff to a usb based hard drive, then you can have complete control over the drive's status.

 

Assume I do, this is pretty close to what's happening actually. Also while browsing on my laps or worse while laying in bed it will be subject to a constant motion, sometimes a sudden burst if I put it away for get angry. I'm not exactly careful with those which is why I opted for an OS on an SSD in the first place.

The thing is, I need the glorified USB to be within the laptop, not outside for portability purposes.

It will often start running once inside the bag

 

Strange it would start in a bag. To be honest, i never sleep or hibernate my lappy. Things are either 'on' or 'off'.

Don't really have an answer for you while running the laptop. You could go into BIOS and disable a drive, but kinda hard to do with sleep mode.

Perhaps someone else can opine.

 

> windows button + r
> devmgmt.msc
> right click drive under "disk drives"
> disable

I think that should work, and there is probably a way to make a batch file/hotkey that does something similar

 

QuietHDD or something like that. Usually these tools are for preventing hard drive to often park heads because this kills those.

 

Can you reenable it at will? Or does that recquire opening the laptop to unplug/plub it back?

 

Or buy a notebook that has a "freefall" sensor that will raise the head for protection if it senses shocks/motion.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

yep, do the same thing but choose enable instead of disable

 

And that will completely shut down any electricity flow from reaching the drive right?

 

No.

(Sorry, really late replying...).