Any way to force a hard drive into sleep mode?

[DougoMan]

I have a few hard drives that I use just for storing backups, and would like to put them to sleep so they do not constantly use power.

For some reason on the new AMD motherboard I have, setting Windows to put the drives to sleep after a number of minutes does not work.

Is there any way to manually put to sleep the ones I am not using?

 

[JackMDS]

It is all or none in Windows. You can not target specific Drives.

 

[Modelworks]

You can send a command via SMART to power off a drive.
Here is a program that does it for you, it needs to be run as admin under win7
http://revosleep.realspooky.de/


right click the taskbar icon and select the drive and it will lock the files, power down the drive and mark it as offline, click it again and it reverses the process.

One caveat is the drive will not auto wake up if you try to use the drive letter as windows assumes the drive is removed, you can get it back with a reboot though.

 

[dawks]

It is all or none in Windows. You can not target specific Drives.

Plus its not a good idea overall. If you try to over-rule the operating system, you can end up crashing the whole show.

If you want to get a drive to sleep, you need to find a way to reduce the number of times the OS wants to hit the drive. Pure data drives will get less access when you're not using the system (provided you close programs that might access data on the data drive). An OS boot drive might fall asleep with short sleep intervals, but will not likely stay asleep.

 

[JackMDS]

Plus its not a good idea overall. If you try to over-rule the operating system, you can end up crashing the whole show.

+1.

Especially if there is SSD drive in the system.


As for the revoSleep, I never tried it.

However giving the "Sloppiness" of the site I would not try it on any system that is working production system.

 

[C1]

Also look in the Power Management section of the BIOS and see what "hooks/handles" are there for drive power management.

 

[Modelworks]

As for the revoSleep, I never tried it.

However giving the "Sloppiness" of the site I would not try it on any system that is working production system.

Judging a program you never tried based on how a website looks to you ?
The program works.

 

[Modelworks]

Plus its not a good idea overall. If you try to over-rule the operating system, you can end up crashing the whole show.

?
Windows is not going to crash because it can't access a non OS drive.
The problem with windows power management is when you open something like explorer it can cause windows to wake every single drive in the system,

 

[corkyg]

Functionally, I do this with an eSATA external drive. I simply turn it on and off as needed. Sleep? I don't trust it. A push button works for me.

Another hardware solution I have used is a SATA mobile rack. A data drive so mounted can be turned on and off by a key switch.

 

[FishAk]

I functionally do this also- but not by turning off drives. I mount encrypted partitions when I need them, and dismount when I don't. The OS doesn't care if it can't find information on an unavailable drive letter. Even with the user folders unavailable, W7 works just fine without crashing.