Can I make an internal non-OS HDD stop spinning on demand?

[mindras15]

HI! I have a Sony VAIO SA series laptop running Windows 7.

So, I have an SSD installed as my main boot drive. I'm going to use an optical bay caddy to install another HDD for storage, but I won't need it often--only for movies and TV shows I watch on weekends.

So my question is, can I somehow tell Windows to shut down the hard drive when I want to, and turn it on when I want to? It's very difficult for me to constantly plug it in and remove it with a laptop.


And when I mean turn it off, I mean completely off (as in no spinning whatsoever unless I specifically enable it).




Thanks a lot!

 

[unksol]

Short of unmounting it no. And there's no reason to do this anyway. Just set the drive to spin down after a few minutes when not in use in the powersaving options.

 

[mindras15]

What would happen if I were to disable the drive in the device manager? Would this cause the drive to completely stop spinning?

 

[memadmax]

Disable in device manager?
No.
Theres a couple of problems with your "no spinning whatsoever" condition.
Windows will try to access the hard drive occasionally on its own for different small reasons, and it will prolly crash if the hard drive is suddenly not responding. Even if there's nothing system related there. The only way around this is to have a hot swappable/pluggable controller. Not likely on your laptop.

Your only real solution is to set the hard drive spin down time to 1 min in the power options.