Hard Drive takes too long to spin up!

[keeleysam]

My 400GB SATA drive takes twice as long as any other drive to spin up, so, when I put this computer on standby....the drive spins down, everything "turns off"/sleeps cuz it's on standby...So when I resume, it starts to spin up the drive...but Windows tries to access the drive TOO quickly, because it assumes the drive is done spinning up already, but it's not!!
So it finds no OS, no anything and it just sits there with a black screen. I need to find a way to increase the delay between when Windows tries to physically access the files from the hard disk. I haven't been able (so far) to find this in the registry.

What can I do to fix this?

P.S. This is a Hitachi Deskstar (and please no Deathstar jokes)

 

[keeleysam]

bump

 

[Tostada]

Sounds like you need a better PSU.

Those newer 3-platter 7200RPM drives use a lot of power to spin up. The 400GB Barracuda actually lists a peak requirement of 2.8A to spin up. One of Hitachi's strong points for the last few years has been lower power requirements, but I still wouldn't be surprised if this is simply your PSU starting to die.

How old is your PSU? How many amps does it have on the 12V rail (or if it's newer, how many amps on 12V1)?

 

[keeleysam]

Originally posted by: Tostada
Sounds like you need a better PSU.

Those newer 3-platter 7200RPM drives use a lot of power to spin up. The 400GB Barracuda actually lists a peak requirement of 2.8A to spin up. One of Hitachi's strong points for the last few years has been lower power requirements, but I still wouldn't be surprised if this is simply your PSU starting to die.

How old is your PSU? How many amps does it have on the 12V rail (or if it's newer, how many amps on 12V1)?

Ijust upgraded from a 350W powmax to a 530(?)W Antec, so I don't think that is the problem.

 

[corkyg]

And that is the reason I never use standby - it has never been very reliable.

 

[keeleysam]

bump

 

[Tostada]

Well I can't imagine what you could do to make the drive come out of standby faster. I think that's more of a BIOS power saving features issue that you might not be able to fix without replacing the motherboard or hard drive.

If you've got Cool & Quiet enabled, you're not going to be saving much power going into standby and it's certainly not worth the hassle. Just have Windows turn off the monitor and hard disks after awhile instead, and Windows shouldn't have a problem waiting for the drive to spin up.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: Tostada
Well I can't imagine what you could do to make the drive come out of standby faster. I think that's more of a BIOS power saving features issue that you might not be able to fix without replacing the motherboard or hard drive.

If you've got Cool & Quiet enabled, you're not going to be saving much power going into standby and it's certainly not worth the hassle. Just have Windows turn off the monitor and hard disks after awhile instead, and Windows shouldn't have a problem waiting for the drive to spin up.

i run cool and quiet and its great

surely though in power management settings cantu just set your computer not into standby, but you know like u can turn the monitor off after 20min, you can turn the hard disks off after a set time too. im nit sure how well this works since even when your not doing anything you get some HDD activity...but its worth a try