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    HD Spindown on Win7 x64 Laptop

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by noiseordinance, Jan 3, 2012.

  1. noiseordinance

    noiseordinance Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hey there. I've been searching for some answers regarding HD spindown for the past few days to no avail. In my Dell XPS 1340 laptop, I added a 64GB SSD in the primary and placed my factory HD in the optical bay as a storage drive. My goal was to make the secondary storage drive spin down for the purpose of increased battery life and reduced heat, though I'm having a difficult time configuring HD spindown times. Could someone provide any suggestions that they might recommend? The default Windows 7 power options don't seem to allow users to specify individual HD settings.

    Any thoughts are appreciated.
     
    noiseordinance, Jan 3, 2012
    #1
  2. TreeTops Ranch

    TreeTops Ranch Notebook Deity

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    I have not found a way to control individual disks for spindown. Probably not doable for reasons that the OS and other software needs to access the drives for various reasons. You never know when that occurs.
     
    TreeTops Ranch, Jan 3, 2012
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  3. JOSEA

    JOSEA NONE

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    TreeTopsRanch is spot on, With mine I have it set to turn off after 15 minutes in advanced settings power plan . Typically I do not access the secondary HDD so after 15 minutes the primary drive (SSD) is powered on and the HDD spins down.
     
    JOSEA, Jan 3, 2012
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  4. noiseordinance

    noiseordinance Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks for the replies! I will set it to 15 minutes or so, as mentioned. I'm curious, is there a way to determine whether activity is occurring on a specific drive, besides listening to it? I disabled indexing and such, so it shouldn't be firing up, but I'd like to verify this somehow.
     
    noiseordinance, Jan 3, 2012
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  5. ratchetnclank

    ratchetnclank Notebook Deity

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    Resource monitor.

    CTRL + SHIFT + ESC.

    Click the peformance tab then resource monitor at the bottom, it should show disk activity for individual disks.
     
    ratchetnclank, Jan 3, 2012
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  6. noiseordinance

    noiseordinance Notebook Enthusiast

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    Wow, that's pretty sweet. Never even knew such a thing existed in Win7. Thanks!
     
    noiseordinance, Jan 3, 2012
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