Swiching off 2 HDs and keeping 1 on

[nigelf]

I have a 74 Gb Raptor (OS / Apps & Games) Sata, and 2 IDE HDs (storage).
1 of the storage HDs is not cooled, has little airflow over it and therefore gets rather warm.
Therefore I was wondering if it is possible to power down the storage HDs after a set amount of (unaccesed) time and still keeping the raptor online & working, because i would be currently using this one.
i.e. switching 2 HDs off and work with 1 active drive. As far as I know the setting in the power control in windows switches the HDs only off when the whole PC is idle.

Thanks in advance

 

[nigelf]

nobody know something about this???
or do you not understand what i am saying???

 

[danskal]

Hi there,

I don't have an expert answer for you, but maybe I can help....

First, make sure the stuff on the "hot" storage drive really is stuff you use rarely.... if you set everything up right and then access something on the drive every few minutes or so from some application that is running in the background, (for example something which monitors the status of harddisks) the HDD will never spin down.

Second, change the power settings (you don't mention whether you are using win2k or xp - my advice should work for win2k) so that _all_ hard disks spin down. I'm pretty sure (but not certain) that the it should treat the hard disks individually - if not, you could try putting them on seperate IDE channels.

This should get the desired effect, if your OS is on the raptor - windows will fairly constantly access that and it will only spin down if you leave it for a long while.

This should be quite easy to test if it works.

If you have done some of the groundwork yourself, the real experts are more willing to help.

/Michael

 

[nigelf]

The warm drive just holds the backup of the backup drive. It shares the ide channel with the DVD-writer. The Other ide Drive (backup & mp3, video, ...) has its own channel. The Raptor (OS/Apps/games) is connected via SATA. I'm Running XP. Are you saying that when i set the power down time for the harddisks to something low (like 10 min.) that the drive will shut down after 10 min. (or whatever i set) of not bein accesed.