How can I disable a hard drive temporarily?

I have two internal 750GB HDs - one is partitioned to C (Windows) and the other D (data). The other is E and simply a mirror backup of D which I do once a day.

The problem is that the E drive goes to sleep after XX minutes but some applications or processes (e.g. Empty Recycle Bin) want to wake it up before they work, which means a delay of ~10 seconds as the E drive spins up - very annoying.

How can I temporarily disable the drive until I need it for the once a day backup?

Thanks.

I'd rather go with the power wire - internal SATA connectors are too fragile to withstand constant plugging/unplugging.

You might consider putting the E: disk into an external enclosure - if you don't mind being limited to USB2.0 speeds. (or the hassle of adding an eSATA port to your PC)

Crawling under a desk, opening the case and unplugging / plugging back in cables every day would be more annoying than the delay.

I hoped there would be some way to disable the drive from within Windows, but I've not found an answer by Googling.

:) That makes me feel a little better that it is not only me.

I already have an external HD for weekly backup and I don't really feel like pulling the E drive out just to solve this problem. It seems crazy this simple thing cannot be solved!

Vielen dank.

Gern geschehen. :)

While there are ways to make the disk inaccessible in Windows, there's no way around powering/spinning it up every time you (re)boot your machine. That alone would be reason enough for me not to have it permanently attached inside the system.

There does not seem to be a Windows solution to the question. Evidently MS thinks that no one ever puts more than one hdd in a computer or thinks you're so brain dead that you would try to disable the drive your OS is using.