I have a 2nd hard drive that goes into sleep mode when not in use after 20 minutes (the windows default).
However, it always seems to turn itself on even if I have 0 programs running.. (Everything unchecked from start up and non-MS services).
How do I prevent it from starting up unless I browse the drive?
I already disabled system restore and MSE, but what else should I do?
You might be able to see what is running using this little program.
Process Explorer
Do you have your second drive set to index.
Yes i have the second drive to "allow files on this drive to be index"
if i disable it, will the files still sort pretty quickly by name?
Indexing could be what is happening. If you want to do searches for things on this drive in any reasonable amount of time you will need it indexing. I really doesn't hurt anything doing it. If a drive drive can't handle indexing the drive is no good.
I don't index my second drive because I only use it for backups that were indexed when I made them. If I had a drive that I was going to be looking for things often I would allow it to be indexing but that is just the choice one makes.
disabling indexing does not affect the sorting by name. Any search on that drive will take an awful lot of time though.
Still, if you are on a laptop (the specs seem to hint at it) I suggest to turn off indexing alltogether and use an utility called Everything when you need to search stuff. Saves power.
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