Utility to manually spin down HDD?

[shouck]

Windows 7 x64, just received an OCZ Agility 2, going to install it in an Acer Aspire 6930 with 2 hard drive bays (currently has a 320GB C: and 500GB E:). I'm going to replace the 320GB, and leave the 500GB. I'm looking for some sort of utility that I can selectively spin down the secondary hard drive, so that if I want to carry the laptop around while on (for whatever reason), I dont have to worry about it spinning at the time. Anyone know of a nice small utility that will sit in the systray & spin down the HDD with a couple clicks?

Thanks!

[Conjor]

If you are looking to shut the harddrive off completely, Windows has an option built in (in the Power Settings control panel) where you can configure "Turn HDD off after X minutes".

EDIT

Check out this program - havn't used it before, but seems like it can shut off a disk with a click or two. Use at your own risk...

http://revosleep.realspooky.de/

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Spin down = stop spinning/turn off. Now slow it down!

[Eric Veteran]

There used to be a PARK.COM for DOS, but I'm not aware of anything like that for newer versions of Windows. Perhaps you could set the power management for that drive to shut down quicker?

[daz-]

This doesnt seem like a good idea at all. I'd just let Windows manage it with the Sleep Harddrives option. It works decent as long as Windows or the page file isnt on the drive, or a running program isnt accessing it. In my computer i have 4 drives, two are formatted HFS+ for MacOS and two are NTFS for Win7. Win7 sleeps the HFS drives no problem. I actually store my music on the HFS drive, so Windows spins it up when I start iTunes.

Having a program do it can lead to big problems. If Windows or a program is reading/writing to/from the drive, you'd probably BSOD the computer. Plus when a program tries to access the disk, and it doesnt respond normally, you'll run into programs tossing errors, crashing, or the computer BSOD'ing again.

[Phenom II]

A great big magnet ?:D

[kjx]

Having a program do it can lead to big problems. If Windows or a program is reading/writing to/from the drive, you'd probably BSOD the computer. Plus when a program tries to access the disk, and it doesnt respond normally, you'll run into programs tossing errors, crashing, or the computer BSOD'ing again.

Software like HP's 3D DriveGuard system can park drive heads almost indefinitely without crashing the system. Granted that it's not exactly "On Demand" since it works based on hardware sensors that detect the system being moved, it is still not impossible to achieve this.

The OP should look for similar software for his system provided his hardware supports it. It will achieve the same results without requiring human intervention.

[shouck]

I guess I phrased my request wrong. What I'm really looking for is a shortcut, keystroke, something, to invoke the standard Windows 7 "turn off hard disk" event. My 2nd hard drive turns itself off all the time, and if it needs to wake up (Winamp song start for example), the app just waits a few seconds, and eventually it gets its data. I dont want to wait X number of minutes for the Power Option setting to take effect. If I'm going to be moving my laptop around, it's going to be an on-demand thing, and I want to be able to do the same to my mechanical hard drive.

Actually, my dad's a programmer, maybe I'll have him look into writing a tiny app to do what I'm looking for. Thanks for the suggestions! Especially the magnet! lol

[Phenom II]

Would this not cause problems if unaware windows was writing to the drive when you pressed stop

lol @ the magnet :p

[shouck]

Would this not cause problems if unaware windows was writing to the drive when you pressed stop

I'm not going to be willy nilly stopping the drive all the time, and typically I know when something is accessing the drive (don't get me started on the safely remove hardware "drive is being accessed" window. omfg), so I'm not worried about bombing an app, I just want to be able to control what the hardware in my pc is doing.

Thinking about the accessing while trying to turn it off issue... I dont know if there's some sort of check the app (the app trying to turn off the drive) can do to check locks on the volume, and if there are no locks, it reports that everything is good to go, and has a green light & turns the drive off. If there IS an access, there should be a red light, and the name of the process accessing the drive in real time. Makes sense to me...

[gacha24]

http://hddscan.com/

http://i36.tinypic.com/2nqf6s3.jpg

It has Spindown option. But the HDD spins up automatically if there is disk activity...