About Internal Hard Disks
January 24th, 2020
The thing is that I mostly use drives C and D, the other ones are almost just for storage (movies, music, docs, etc) played once in a while.
When I turn on the PC all HDD begin to function and spin and shorten their lives, is there a way to deactivate drives E, F and G? And activate any of them just when needed?
Thanks
Not sure you can..
You can disable them in the bios..But they still be powered and spinning..
one sure way is to pull the power connectors in the back of the drives..
Yes, but it’s not practical. A friend told me a bout a NAS, what’s that? He couldn’t ellaborate more
Win7? Use windows power settings there’s an option there. Linux ofc let’s you have total control over your drives. Just Google to see what NAS is, IMO it’s too much hassle and expensive for plain home use and it still depends on your settings. BTW idling/spinning again a HDD makes it more prone to wear than just leaving it to low spin, especially for 5400 rpm drives. I wouldn’t generally worry about all this if I were you, a good thing for you to have would be steady temperature inside your case and a fan blowing directly at them if you can.
I use one of these. It controls 6 WD green 4tb drives and has had no problems.
http://www.amazon.com/ORICO-HD-PW6101-Drive-Switch-Controller/dp/B005NVV2GC
They also make a 4 switch model which fits into a 3.5 inch slot instead of a 5.25 slot.
As Jack_Torrance mentioned turning on and off can cause extra wear and stress. If you use these the drives on a daily basis you should probably just leave them as they are. In my case, a drive might go unused for a week or longer so I just turn them off.
Thanks to all. , what’s the genereric name of the hardware you mentioned.
I’ve figured out, sorry. It seems a good solution, I’ll investigate more.
If you get one be careful with the connectors that plug into the drives. The plastic is thin and easily cracked if put in a bind. That’s the only complaint I found in reviews and it happened to me. Repaired with a little wrap of electrical tape. If I was plugging and unplugging a lot I would solder on some sturdier connectors.
Advanced power options in Windows 8.1 gives you the option to shut down HD after whatever number of minutes you specify. But I’m not sure how that works because I have two HDs and the only one that shuts down is my data HD (D). My C drive with the OS on it never seems to shut down at all no matter how long I leave it on.
You could try All in 1 HDD Docking station this would allow you you to turn them off when not in use