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    Suggestions for a W7 Good Power Mgmt Tool - Free or Pay

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Rodster, Oct 23, 2011.

  1. Rodster

    Rodster Merica

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    Windows 7 PM just doesn't cut it. I have multiple drives each with self running W7 OSes. If there isn't anything on the drive it times out and powers off. If I have an OS on a HDD Windows 7 PM will not power off those other running drives.

    I'm looking for a W7 PM utility free or pay that will allow me to turn them off. In case the curiosity as to why I have multiple drives it's simple. It's strictly a gaming rig. Drive #1 has W7 OS with EasyBCD, Drive #2 is for all of my Flight sims and Drive #3 is for all of my racing sims.
     
    Rodster, Oct 23, 2011
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  2. MAA83

    MAA83 Notebook Evangelist

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    You can get a utility but there's something else going on.. that's not the correct behavior. My 2nd/3rd drive raid array on my gaming rig spins down fine after 10 minutes of HDD inactivity, even the 1st OS drive will spin down if there truly is no activity. This is probably a stupid question, but just to make sure.. you DO have the right idle timers set in the power settings correct? You can generate a health report or look through the event log.. it may show you what's interrupting the drives powering down. Those utilities are hit n miss for me though when it comes to analyzing power usage..
     
    MAA83, Oct 23, 2011
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  3. Rodster

    Rodster Merica

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    Yeah my idle time is set to 5 minutes. In fact drive #1 is the only drive which has EasyBCD and MSE. The other drives are not running AV. I know that if an AV is monitoring drives they won't cycle down.
     
    Rodster, Oct 23, 2011
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  4. MAA83

    MAA83 Notebook Evangelist

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    I know certain hardware monitoring programs, like HDDTemp, etc, will also be seen as an active process on the respective drive and will prevent shut down.

    I've also seen a few cases where disabling indexing allowed sleep.

    But these are just random possibilities, not troubleshooting advice by far. Sorry, power issues can be a PITA to track! It took me 2 weeks to figure out why my screen flickered every time I plugged or unplugged!

    Did they used to sleep properly? Is this a clean install?

    I know sometimes when switching to AHCI mode from IDE after w7 is already installed will mess with HDD sleep.

    Any bios settings that concern idle timers?
     
    MAA83, Oct 23, 2011
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