Secondary drives being shut down

I am not sure if this is a W7 "issue" but I assume it is because I never noticed it in XP.

I have 4 drives in my PC. 1 for the OS, 1 backup, 1 data and 1 backup for the data drive.

What I have noticed the recently is that while the PC is running I can hear a drive power down and slowly stop spinning. If I trry to access the files on that drive it powers back up and I get to the files just fine.

While it is not a big issue I don't like having my drives start and stop all the time just because of the wear on the motor.

Is this a setting I am not aware of or anything I can do to change this?

Right click the desktop, choose personalize. Then at bottom, screen saver. Then "change power settings." Choose a performance plan, then go into "change plan settings" and you will have hard drive power options after finally choosing "change advanced power settings."

Thanks torrentg!

TeddyKGB said:

I am not sure if this is a W7 "issue" but I assume it is because I never noticed it in XP.

I have 4 drives in my PC. 1 for the OS, 1 backup, 1 data and 1 backup for the data drive.

What I have noticed the recently is that while the PC is running I can hear a drive power down and slowly stop spinning. If I trry to access the files on that drive it powers back up and I get to the files just fine.

While it is not a big issue I don't like having my drives start and stop all the time just because of the wear on the motor.

Is this a setting I am not aware of or anything I can do to change this?

Hi TeddyKGB,

Its just power management putting the drive to sleep to preserve its life-span and power usage

Hard-Drives will spinup and down thousands of times over their life-span, its better running the least amount of time because there's less wear n tear usage of the drive while its running so dont be concerned about the drive spinning up or down

Its the amount of hours the drive is running that can be more concerning for the motor




If you like, you can change the settings here: