Turn off HDD in optical bay

Is there any way that I can turn off the HDD that I have in the optical bay when it is not in use?

 

Device manager>disks>hdd>right click disable...

 

even when I disable the HDD, I can still hear it spinning.

 

I'm new to this dual drive setup, hopefully someone can help me with this. The HDD in the optical drive constantly spins even though I have nothing on it at the moment and I install all my programs on the SSD

 

I feel your pain. As you noted, even disabling it won't make it go to sleep. For the longest time, I had a solution to put mine to sleep. I wrote a script to send the command to the drive to spin down. This needed to be resent every time the machine woke up. I set all this up automagically. It worked well for months until I did a Windows update and it stopped working. Now my HDD does spin down on it's own about half the time after a couple of mins. I have HDD spindown set to 1 min. I don't know why it spins down sometimes and not others. I think there's some windows background process that pings it keeping it awake sometimes. I have search off so that's not it.

 

disable the sata port..Apparently that doesnt work either. I now have the same issue with an SA390. Louder than the fan the hdd is..Anyone chime in on this?

 

Use hdparm that is well-known in the linux world.

Index of /hdparm

If you are not familiar with this powerful tool, visit hdparm(8): get/set SATA/IDE device parameters - Linux man page and check out the options.

I used to have no problems for years on my dual HDD-driven notebook with using

hdparm -y hda

hda has to be replaced with the respective harddrive, use hdparm -I to find out. That command issues an immediate spindown on the drive, it gets reactivated as soon as you access the drive again.

 

That's what my script was doing. It stopped working at some point. What happens if I do it manually now is that the drive does spin down but then spins right back up a second later. Something in the OS is pinging it. Considering I've one 2 fresh installs since it used to work, it's something inherent in W7.

 

linux scares me. My mac was so much easier, zero issues for years, with this thing its nothing but scripts, registry edits, bios/firmware updates, and drivers. No wonder Apple market share has quadrupled in the last 3 years..

 

So what can I use on Windows to turn off the HDD when it isn't being used? Is hdparm just for Linux?

 

See message #8.

 

I get a "permission denied" for every command I use with hdparm.

 

I was thinking of purchasing an SA3 and installing an SSD in the the regular HDD location and another HDD in the optical bay for storage of files. Are folks experiencing this same problem of being unable to turn off the HDD in the optical bay with the SA3?

If so, I wonder if it is better to just go with a hybrid drive like the Seagate Momentus XT in the regular drive location and not put a drive in the optical bay to avoid the extra noise and wear and tear from the drive being unable to spin down?

I'm glad I heard about this potential problem as I was for sure going to do an SSD and HDD.

Thanks.

 

On my Z1, the following seems to work for me:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\hdparm\bin\hdparm.exe" -y hdb

I've made it into a shortcut on the desktop and assigned it as Ctrl+Shift+Z.

 

try run it as administrator

thanks for reporting, hdparm works good, happy to share anytime.

 

can someone post idiot proof step by step on how to use this?

 

I've gotten hdparm to work but how can I create a shortcut on the desktop for it? Or even maybe make the eject button execute it?

 

rightclick on the hdparm.exe file and chose create shortcut. Rightclick on the shortcut and chose properties. Change target so it looks like this (replace the given path to the hdparm executable if you changed the default install dir). Take care of the quotes.

Code:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\hdparm\bin\hdparm.exe" -y hdb

You can also define an icon and keyboard shortcut. Then press OK and copy this file to your desktop or start menu. That's it.

The eject button was not hacked yet but I hacked the ASSIST and VAIO buttons so they can be manually set to run a user-defined program. See this thread that includes the download package and installation notes:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...c-zs-s-buttons-your-purposes.html#post6949492

If you want to assign the ASSIST or VAIO button to start the hdparm command, install the custom s-buttons package. Make sure it works by testing it with whatever file. Create a new empty text file and paste this (again replace the given path to the hdparm executable if you changed the default install dir):

Code:

@echo off
"C:\Program Files (x86)\hdparm\bin\hdparm.exe" -y hdb

Save the file in the editor and change the file type to .bat - move the file to some safe place, e.g the above hdparm directory or c:\windows etc.

Then open up LauncherControl from my Custom S-Buttons package and click change on your preferred button. Then navigate to the folder where you moved the .bat file and type

Code:

*.bat

into the filename box and press enter. Now select the file, hit OK, close LauncherControl by clicking on "Save and Close" and try the button.

 

I put it on my desktop but I have to always right click and run as administrator. How can I make it run as administrator by default?

 

Select properties of the shortcut and enable run as administrator in the compatibility tab. You can also disable UAC generally. Giyf.

 

it actually came with some presets like putting 2nd drive in standby but mine is still spinning...

 

And what is your question? Did you try

hdparm -I hda
hdparm -I hdb

etc. in order to figure out which is the correct drive?

 

yes, the drive is hdb, after i run the -y command its still spinning. Same if I use the shortcut method.

 

Please post the output of the hdparm -I hdb command.

 

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Dmitri>hdparm -I hdb

hdb:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: WDC WD5000BPVT-55HXZT3
Serial Number: WD-WXH1CB1U1974
Firmware Revision: 01.01A01
Transport: Serial, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5
Standards:
Supported: 8 7 6 5
Likely used: 8
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 16383 16383
heads 16 16
sectors/track 63 63
--
CHS current addressable sectors: 16514064
LBA user addressable sectors: 268435455
LBA48 user addressable sectors: 976773168
device size with M = 1024*1024: 476940 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 500107 MBytes (500 GB)
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
Queue depth: 32
Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 16
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x0080)
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* SMART feature set
Security Mode feature set
* Power Management feature set
* Write cache
* Look-ahead
* Host Protected Area feature set
* WRITE_BUFFER command
* READ_BUFFER command
* NOP cmd
* DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
* Advanced Power Management feature set
SET_MAX security extension
* 48-bit Address feature set
* Device Configuration Overlay feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
* FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
* SMART error logging
* SMART self-test
* General Purpose Logging feature set
* 64-bit World wide name
* IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD
* {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
* Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
* SATA-I signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
* SATA-II signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
* Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
* Host-initiated interface power management
* Phy event counters
* unknown 76[11]
* unknown 76[12]
* DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
Device-initiated interface power management
* Software settings preservation
* SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
* SCT LBA Segment Access (AC2)
* SCT Features Control (AC4)
* SCT Data Tables (AC5)
unknown 206[12]
unknown 206[13]
unknown 206[14]
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
not enabled
not locked
frozen
not expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
122min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 122min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.

Checksum: correct

C:\Users\Dmitri>

 

Is there any reason for a reasonably experienced person to have UAC enabled? ("reasonably experienced" being in the eyes of the beholder )?

 

nope not at all

 

Ok, please post what it says when you enter

hdparm -y hdb
hdparm -Y hdb

(command arguments are case sensitive)

 

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Dmitri>hdparm -y hdb

hdb:
issuing standby command

C:\Users\Dmitri>

 

Ok, and the second command?

 

the other one says issuing sleep command. sounds like it works but i can still feel it spinning on the left side o the laptop...

 

Mine stops spinning, the HDD is in sleep mode and barely makes any noise.
I have a display off button on my CW that lets me take the screen off when I connect to an external display or when I'm playing music I wanted to know if there is any way to do this on the Z? I wanna use pyros S-buttons to configure it to the Assist button as well.

 

There is certainly some screen-off exe available on the nets, just point my S-Button tool on that file and that's it.

 

How can I stop my hdparm shorcut and the screen off exe from asking for permission everytime I use them?

Update: I just disabled UAC entirely

 

thanks for your help pyro, it works. Its the damn fan thats making the noise. Sony's "silent" mode is not very silent even with cpu set to max out at 35% fan is all all the time...

 

Good to hear, glad my tips helped you. Anytime.

 

yea pyro, thanks for all the help. Only thing that bugs me at the moment is that the HDD in the optical bay goes on out of nowhere sometimes. The screen.exe I found doesnt work well since it takes off the screen of the Z and the external display but everything else is working great!