How to keep an external hard drive useful and healthy longer. Disk enclosure and external hard drive spindown survey. Hdd spinning downclicking every 30 seconds solved windows. Whats the effect of standby spindown mode on modern hard. The only nas i personally use disk spin down on is my dedicated backup nas that normally is only active a few hours a night. I dont often access the data on the spinning hard drive so would like to be able to spin it down to both make it quieter and use less energy.
Seagate seatools is free hard drive testing software that comes in two forms for home users. If you no longer hear the strange noise, the hard drive was the culprit. Is there a way to tell windows server r2 to spin down a hard drive if there is inactivity while the hdd is connected to a 9220i in it mode. Oct 15, 2015 however, it doesnt seem to work, because my hdd doesnt spin down after the specified minutes of inactivity. Turn off hard disk after idle in windows 10 winaero. Save battery by spinning down hard drive sooner wednesday, february 22nd, 2012 author. Read about one firms experience with disk spindown. Jan 01, 2017 by default windows 10 will power down hard drives after 20 minutes of inactivity or if the computer is a laptop, 10 minutes when on battery. Seagate hard drive apps and hard drive software seagate us. Waited for longer time after turning off all access to the device to make sure no application is accessing files this is the content of my etcdefaulthdidle file. The entire point here is to do this directly, not by changing the systemwide spin down timeout to a 1second period and waiting for the disk to spin down. I wouldnt recommend complete spindown though if the drive is likely to spin up and down several times a day. With the physical switch you can leave the power turned off to them completely until you want to use them.
It also offers you the possibility to completely spin down the hdd if reducing rpm isnt enough complete spindown is supported with nonhitachis as well. This can potentially give your hard disk a longer livespan. A modern hard drive will consume 28 watts idling while spun up. My best practices for external hard drives concern software. While this tool is made almost 8 years ago for windows xp originally, it. Update april 2020 i had a contact with the guy who is developing the aformentioned revosleep application, and he have rolled out an update to the revosleep, which improves the compatiblity with the windows 10, so this is still by far the best tool for spinning down unused hdds in a windows 10 machines. For solid state drives ssd this has no affect, but for traditional mechanical hard drives, when this happens the hard drive will spin down reducing its power usage and giving the drive an. I recently got my first hard drive for my nas rock64 setup a wd red 4. So i am currently having a problem where i have my external hdd plugged into my usb 3. Windows 10 ignores power settings for usb external hard drives. In the past ive kludged this by setting a cron job to update a file every few minutes. I would generally just have a hard drive set to no spin down, and let windows put the computer to sleep when you want to. What are some of the best hard disk drive hdd diagnostic.
Youll want to schedule it so its only spunup while you are loggedon or something perhaps. I currently have it set to 30 mins so that the main drive will stayed spinned up since it should be in use most of the time etc. Next time your software access the drive, it will take a few seconds before the drive. Available for mobile, tablet, or desktop devices on ios and android platforms. With seatools for dos, you can only test hard drives from seagate and maxtor. Hdd wont spin downsleep in windows 10 microsoft community. Whats the effect of standby spindown mode on modern. This hard drive has its own internal setting for spinning down after inactivity. Take wd spindown or stop utility for a spin to see how useful it can actually be for you. Sep 08, 2009 customizing hard disk spin down times. Talking about sata disks, the former is the most possible reason. Automatic disk standby using kernel diskstats and hdparm.
So im really not sure if theyre spinning down or not. The program can also start or stop spindle immediately. Choosing the best overall hard drive repair software. After the system restarted, a few hours later i would get an email from stablebit scanner indicating that one or. Im planning to use the 750gb optibay drive for storing music and video files, since they dont need high performance, and the drive can be allowed to spin down when im not listening to music or watching videos, which seems like an ideal arrangement from a power efficiency. The spin down spin up issue is usually related to power management function. In short the approved windows 10 drivers from version 14 and above have a bug that prevents the standard hdd spin down in windows 10 from functioning. Hard drive spins up, the heads click a few times, then drive. The emc tech we contacted told us to leave the san running. So ive recently built my own fileserver nas to store my files etc. Drives western digital sdc to sdf is my raid 5 array. Permanently configure hard drives to spin down after a given. Mar 23, 2010 ive recently installed an optibay with 750gb wd hdd into my new macbook pro, alongside the 512gb ssd i got from apple.
Hddscan is a free hard drive testing program for all types of drives, no matter the manufacturer. To do that, go into system pref energy saver sleep show details and change put the hard disks to sleep when possible. The power usage of the disks in a ts219p ii may be high compared to the total power but honestly, put in perspective, it is most likely ridiculous to chase those few watts. I have a maxtor 500gb sata hard drive stm3500320as. For that matter, you can kill a drive by leaving it off and untouched for. This is not a problem with modern hard drives because of a feature called active harddrive protection which immediately moves the head away from the disk if any sudden movements occur. The advantage of spinning down is a few watts and a slight reduction in white noise. Find processes causing regular wake ups of hard drives. Software to allow the user to change the sleep time, toggle the lights, and run drive diagnostics on a windows computer. Hddscan had a spindown option but im not sure if its still there.
Hdd spin down hdd standby qnap nas community forum. For many years ive been using utility revosleep for exactly that purpose it has simple taskbar popup menu that allows to manually spin down sleep or spin up wake any hard drive of your computer. I have a 1tb elements portable, and it stops spinning after 10 minutes of inactivity. English general discussion hdsentinel prevents spin down hard disk sentinel, hard disk monitoring software. So the drive is likely to run hotterthandesirable in that enclosure, thereby shortening its life. The software with a nice interface and with an intuitive layout. Hdd spinning downclicking every 30 seconds usually im one to exhaust every single possibility before asking for help, but as of right now i am rather desperate to find an answer because this issue is driving me mad. I am testing the ram disk software from rambunctiuos with the hdd spun down in a range of situations eg different mp3 programs. Jan 26, 2012 ok so im having this computer annoyance and maybe you guys can help me out. For solid state drives ssd this has no affect, but for traditional mechanical hard drives, when this happens the hard drive will spin down reducing its power usage and giving the drive an opportunity to cool down. Its easy on linux but, what is the best way to spin down a hdd on demand using as small 3rd party software as possible on windows. If any program requests hdd access the internal timer will be reset and spindle will continue to spin.
Prevent hard drives from going to sleep in windows 10. Install the software as indicated in the above table. Stop spindown of usb hdd solved windows 7 help forums. But i want an automatic spin down after 2 hours of idle. Seatools bootable and seatools for dos support seagate or maxtor drives and run independent from your operating system on their own usb drive or cd, respectively. It will spin the drive down until its completely idle, making the drive nearly silent.
It saves a little energy, but it will the drive faster imo spinning up and down all the time. The spin 3 convertible touchscreen laptop features a long battery life as well as coming with a rechargeable acer active stylus and up to a 10 th gen intel core i7 processor. If drive is in idle spindle would be stopped after the time set in the timer. The hard drive would spin up, like any healthy hard drive would. Turn off hard disk after idle in windows 10 a special option in windows 10 allows the user to turn off hard drives automatically after a specified period of inactivity. For a quick introduction to hard drive anatomy have a look at our article here. Considering the complex and advanced functions of this app, the simple. But it appears that the esxi accesses the hdds every 30 min, because the automatic spin down only works with an idle time less then 30 min. If any program requests hdd access drives spindle will spin up. Plus when a program tries to access the disk, and it doesnt respond normally, youll run into programs tossing errors, crashing, or the computer. It always seems like you run out of battery power at the worst possible moment. Spin down idle drives in ubuntu server to save electricity. Apr 08, 2020 hard disk sentinel is a tool that can help monitor your hdd. The utility can check your disk for bad blocks in various test modes reading, verification, erasing, predicting disk degradation before you have to call data recovery service.
All my hdds have been reported as healthy, apart from a 2007 seagate laptop hdd i knew was dying. I also have a 500gb elements portable, and it stops spinning after 9 seconds of inactivity. Easily browse your universe of files from anywhere with the free seagate media app, accessible from your smartphone or tablet. It seems to be a neverending battle trying to get the most out of your laptop battery. My drive is sleeping too much in windows seagate support us. Now that you know what causes hard drive failure, we have for you a list of top 6 best hdd repair software tools that you can use to analyze, avoid, and solve virtually all common hard drive issues. But obviously, there may be large amounts of time when it is not in use, so id like to make it check to see if it is in use say every hour or so and if it isnt, spin down. From what i can tell, regularly turning a hard drive on and off can wear it down. But i set it all up and im wondering if i should let my hard drives spin down i wont access it that often only for watching media on plex. In some situations, this may be activated independently from the current hdd sleep time power management setting of windows and yes, can be really annoying. Ive looked at this but im a raspbianlinux noob and would appreciate any advice. In this case study, our client had a dying hard drive filled with their important quicken documents. How to spin down some hard drives windows 10 forums. This guide shows you, how to adjust the timer for your hard disk, which determines when your hdd is gonna turn off.
To list your device names, enter mount in the terminal first. I have never been a fan of a hard drive spinning up and down a lot. Feb 25, 2014 hard drive spins up, the heads click a few times, then drive spins down posted in internal hardware. The readwrite heads have crashed into the platters and are now preventing the hard drive from spinningup. To spin up volumesitunes, i need to execute the command. He said we would have fewer drives fail due to heat than if we shut down and restarted once the work was completed. Since this server will be running 24 hours a day the running costs are something that should not be ignored. The hard drive engine will be stopped and its disks will not spin.
Using spindown to prolong the life of old hard disks. I use raspbian and am looking for a way to connect an old seagate 500gb usb externally powered hard drive so i can store my movies etc on it. Release notes this software is designed to work with the seagate goflex for mac and seagate expansion drive products that dont include the seagate dashboard software. This software is designed to work with the seagate goflex for mac and seagate expansion drive products that dont include the seagate dashboard software. Share whats on your screen with family, friends and colleagues as colors stay true from a.
Mac os x has an option to keep hard drives spinning for quick file access, or to save power and reduce noise by spinning them down when theyre not in use. Get more done on your computer with the new spin 3. Top 6 best hard disk repair software updated in 2020. Since most external ide disk enclosures dont support setting the ide idle timer, a program like hdidle is required to spin down idle disks automatically a word of caution. My drives are well over the 3 year warranty period and they run 247 with me shutting the system down a few times a year to blow any dust out of the case and power supply. Hddscan is a free test tool for hard disk drives, usb flash, raid volumes and ssd drives. I tried enabling apm in the hard disk spin down sleep hdd in enclosure videohelp forum. To fix hard drive through this hard drive repair software, go to the 1 click maintenance tab on the interface.
I need a function i can call at a specific moment in time when im using my laptop, not something generic that doesnt suit 95% of situations. The program is easy to use, is completely portable, supports almost all drive interfaces, and seems to be regularly updated. The drives that are set to a value higher than 127 except 255 wont spin down, the drives that show not supported either manage this value on their own or are that old that they are not supporting power management at all. I have an asus h97me motherboard and on the asus website the official driver is 14. Power savings with a catch disk spindown and maid can reduce power consumption, but spinup latency and timeouts are drawbacks. Since most external ide disk enclosures dont support setting the ide idle timer, a program like hdidle is required to spin down idle disks automatically. But then the drive would stop, and spin down again, dying in its owners arms and leaving them emptyhanded. Jun 03, 2008 all standard drives spin down in os x with inactivity and with sleep. Cant get any of my 8 hard drives to spin down in windows.
I saw this option in the xfce power management to never spin down hard disks. By default windows 10 will power down hard drives after 20 minutes of inactivity or if the computer is a laptop, 10 minutes when on battery. Now select the disk repair option, then click on scan for issues to seek and fix issues on hard drive, if any. This feature is helpful for those who need to save energy, i. However what i was trying to decide was the back and forth question of do i leave the hard drives spinning constantly or should i have them spin down. You generally cant use hdparm with sas disks or in some cases even on sas controllers with sata drives depends on the capabilities exposed by the driver. Harddisk s do spin down after the configured timeout, but show unwanted regular wake ups, without being accessed from clients. Confirm that your drive is connected directly and correctly.
This test can really save you a lot of time during the troubleshooting of a noisy internal component. Yes i spin down sas drives in zfs pools on freenas freebsd and proxmox zol. Some routers have the option to set the usb ports for power saving mode or set a time before they spin down external hdds. You can safely unmount and spin down an external hard disk from the terminal most easily by using the commandline functionality of udisks, which does not require the use of sudo if your system is set up correctly. My previous computer had windows 7, and on that os, the same external hard drive would happily stay spinning 247, always. The drive must be connected directly to the computers usb or firewire port to ensure that the spin down command is sent to the drive. I want to spin down external hard drive from the terminal before unmounting.
If i do hdparm y devsdg devsdh the drives spin down but after 25 minutes they become active again. To spin down volumesitunes, id execute either one of the commands. Find out which process prevents the hard drives from spindown. But in reality, there are a lot of folks here who can speak from personal experience, hard drives in general will last longer if you dont spin them up frequently. Apr 22, 2008 for testing purposes i set cycletime to 15 and idletime to 60, but you shouldnt use these values on a regular system, as they would lead to a significant number of disk spin updown cycles per day. With the software spindown solution, all the hard drives still power on when the computer starts. Windows utility to spindown unused hdds alternative to revosleep. These drives are on a server array, and i really dont want them to ever spin down. We once had to shut our server room down for the air conditioner to be repaired it was scheduled maintenance. It seems to work if it is connected directly to the internal sata ports, but obviously i want to use the hba. If you arent interested in that, chkdsk check disk, microsofts windows utility can be used. Oct 15, 2015 what is the spindown time how long does it take to go into powersaving spindown mode for the wd 2tb elements portable usb 3. Seagate software and apps help you manage your content wherever you are.
One way of reducing power consumption is to spin down the hard drives, or put them into standby, when they are not in use. Hard disk sentinel is a tool that can help monitor your hdd. Sep 10, 2011 just a caution you probably already know. When you have found your external drive, use the following commands. I have a system with an ssd containing my os opensuse and a lot of my data as well as a traditional spinning hard drive with extra data.
Do not connect the drive to a usb or firewire port on the computer monitor, the keyboard, or a. Achieving silence how to turn off hard disk on windows 10. Hddscan free hdd and ssd test diagnostics software with. I think its worthy of note that the i often hear the drive power down and up, sometimes the down is followed immediately by an up but it always spins all the way down before spinning up. Virtually every computer manufacturer has a utility on their website that checks hard drives for free. For testing purposes i set cycletime to 15 and idletime to 60, but you shouldnt use these values on a regular system, as they would lead to a significant number of disk spin up down cycles per day. The sounds made by failed hard drives and what they mean for. The platter motor which should spin the platters inside the hard drive chassis has become seized. However, it will also work with other products like seagate goflex. After recently upgrading my plex windows 10 machine, i had an issue where i couldnt prevent hard drives from going to sleep on that system.
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