Long boot time & Other problems - HDDs not spinning up

[Mr. Pedantic]

I've noticed that at boot, and after my computer has been idle for a while (so that the hard drives spin down) when I use the computer, it takes a long time for the computer to respond. For example, I can move my mouse around fine, but if I try to open a folder or run a program, it won't work - basically a hard drive problem. After 20 seconds or so I'll hear the hard drive will spin up and it will work normally.



This happens at boot as well; just now, it took about 2 minutes to boot because for most of that time the HDDs were not going.


What's happening?

 

[mfenn]

For the first problem, I'll bet that the HDDs are set to spin down when idle. What OS are you running?

For the second problem, can you be more specific? At what point do you notice that the HDDs are not going and how are you determining this?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

No, the hard drives aren't set to spin down, strangely enough. Windows 7 64-bit HP.

I notice the hard drives weren't spinning when they do finally spin up; there's a sound, obviously, that the HDDs make, and that's the only way I know.

 

[Puppies04]

No, the hard drives aren't set to spin down, strangely enough. Windows 7 64-bit HP. I notice the hard drives weren't spinning when they do finally spin up; there's a sound, obviously, that the HDDs make, and that's the only way I know.

Well sounds like the hard drives are set to spin down otherwise they wouldn't do it.

 

[mfenn]

What model of HDDs do you have? Some "green" models will automatically spin down no matter what the OS says.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

They're Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB drives.

Well sounds like the hard drives are set to spin down otherwise they wouldn't do it.

I would assume so, I just have to find where.

 

[mfenn]

Yeah, Blues shouldn't spin down automatically. Try running HDDScan (make sure to run as administrator), going to Tasks -> IDE Features, and turning AAM, APM, etc. off.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

They were all disabled by default.

 

[mfenn]

Hmm, I'm stumped then.

 

[corkyg]

Go to your Power Plan settings in Control Panel and set all HDDs to "Never."