Quiet PC: turn off hard drives

[mtlcan]

Does anybody know how to turn off a hard drive, either via an application or programmatically (PowerShell or other code)? I'm fed up with the noise of my mechanical hard drives, and Windows is unreliable turning off the disks after a certain amount of time.

 

[eton975]

HDDScan.

Or, you can set APM with CrystalDiskInfo and make it run on startup.

 

[greenhawk]

it generally helps to work out why they are noisy. If it is vibrations, then it can be fixed or limited. If it is the actual drive it might be an issue with it being about it die.

Windows power management is generally pretty good, as long as you let it work. Disabling programs that work when the system is idle (like windows indexing, disk monitoring software or anti virus programs all need to be disabled and set to only work when you trigger them.

Doing this can be easier and cheaper than chasing the noise, as then you will find the gpu fan too noisy, the cpu fan too noisy or even the power supply too noisy.

 

[hhhd1]

There was a software i used in the past that does that exactly, it forces power off the drives, and disable them in device manager to avoid windows starting them up again.

unfortunately i cant remember its name right now ...

 

[mtlcan]

HDDscan doesn't work on Windows 10 64bit.

With CrystalDiskInfo only 2 of my 6 drives support AAM (acoustic management). APM (power management) is only supported by SSDs which are silent already.

It is surprising how difficult it is to perform a simple task such as turning off a hard drive. The CIM and WMI disk classes don't implement the SetPowerState method, so I haven't been able to use PowerShell or other code to accomplish this.

My mechanical disks are the only source of noise on my computer. I don't use a dedicated GPU, the PSU fan only starts above 350W, and all CPU and case fans are practically silent under normal conditions, and when the Windows Power Options function eventually turns off disks, my room turns dead silent.

Is there really no option at all?

 

[hhhd1]

Try this:

http://revosleep.realspooky.de/

it does the following:


* Lock all partitions on the specified hard disk
* Dismount all partitions on the specified hard disk
* Sleep the specified hard disk
* Put all volumes on the specified hard disk in offline state (vista)
* Deactivate the driver for the specified hard disk
* The locked drives won't wake up
* You can unlock/lock different drives

 

[corkyg]

I turn off power to all drives not in use. No software needed - just have a power on/off switch for every drive. Mobile racks make that really easy.

 

[GAO]

I just set the idle spin-down time to 3 minutes in the windows power plan.