Do Windows HDD power settings have any effect on SSDs?

[Carson Dyle]

Was wondering whether or not Windows 7 power settings actually do anything to a system SSD? If I have a system set to turn off the "hard drives" after 20 minutes, but have Sleep disabled, is it any slower to awaken from having the disk turned off when that disk is an SSD? And is there actually an power savings to be had when doing so?

 

[Brink]

Hello Carson,

Nope. They will not affect SSDs. Only HDDs.

Hard Drive - Turn Off Hard Disk After Idle or Never

It depends on how often you access the HDD, and how long the HDD stays turned off for how much power you may save. Either way, the more you save the better. It can add up to save a little bit on your electric bill for the year.

There is a delay of a few moments as the HDD spins back up when trying to access it after it has been turned off. If you do this often, then it can get annoying. You would just need to adjust your settings to fit your needs to help with this though.

 

[Megahertz07]

On a Power Saving mode, disks aren't actually powered down. In this state the drive is still on, only the disk motor is stopped. That's explain the time it takes to "wake up". This "wake up" time is the time required to spin up the disk.
As SSD has no disk to spin up / down, it doesn't make any difference to set it to "turn off".

 

[LMiller7]

SSDs have power saving modes but unlike conventional drives the transition time is very fast. Because this is so fast power management is done internally without help from the OS or user.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I would use a performance power plan and select Never for hard drive.

You can read about other stuff here,
SSD Tweaks and Optimizations in Windows 7

If it's samsung ssd they make it pretty easy with samsung magician to do these tweaks and of course updating the ssd's firmware