Hard Drive stops running when not in use

Whammy

Honorable
Dec 31, 2013
489
0
10,960
Hey guys, ever since I've been using my SSD, which has been a while now, I've obviously been storing pictures and videos on an HDD. The only thing, however, is that when I don't store anything on it or simply open it up for a while, it seems to stop or at least drastically slow down. Whenever I want to save a picture to it, it takes like 2 seconds to load and I suddenly hear it start spinning (it's the loudest thing in my computer). Afterwards, I can copy paste and save pictures or videos all I want and it won't take a while to load. I'm assuming this is a power saving option, but I would like to disable that. Any ideas?
 
Solution
The power options for your computer allow you to change the timeout for disk spin down. Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings (for which ever power plan is selected) -> Change Advanced Power Settings -> Hard Disk

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
The power options for your computer allow you to change the timeout for disk spin down. Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings (for which ever power plan is selected) -> Change Advanced Power Settings -> Hard Disk
 
Solution
Hi there Whammy,

If the thing that kanewolf proposed does not work, it may be that the drive has some power efficient characteristics and parks the head more often. It will not hurt if you run a brand specific testing software to check out its health.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD