is there anything i can do to get power management to put some of my HDDs on power saving independant to what im doing on the pc?

id like to power down the older drives im not using as theyre making a racket.

possible at all ?  :?

In linux you can use hdparm to set your drives to power down after a certain time of inactivity. No idea about windows though.

Cant you do it in BIOS ?

This has been part of Windows Power Management options for as long as I can rememeber!  

Quote from: WalrusbonzoThis has been part of Windows Power Management options for as long as I can rememeber!  

Thats for all drives though, you cannot set an independant timeout for specific drives afaik ?!

yup all drives from what i remember,

i want to do it individually, so i can turn off the old and crappy 80gb to see if its the one making the racket in the pc  

ner mind

HDD manufactorer software perhaps ?

had a look on maxtor site, nothing beyond the verify tool was in downloads.

disabling in the bios still lets the drive power and spin itself up, id have to physically unplug the drives power to get it to stop.

hmm think i might get one or two of those 500 GB drives and scrap the old ones  

if anyone has any more ideas, lemme know

there are powersaving options in BIOS as well but they differ from MB to MB if u are lucky u can set them individually

rig yourself up a bunch of switches on an unused drive bay face plate. Feed them the power from the PSU and then from the switch back to the HDD; switch on/off at your pleasure

Quote from: Nimrodrig yourself up a bunch of switches on an unused drive bay face plate. Feed them the power from the PSU and then from the switch back to the HDD; switch on/off at your pleasure

Thats a cool idea!

Quote from: Nimrodrig yourself up a bunch of switches on an unused drive bay face plate. Feed them the power from the PSU and then from the switch back to the HDD; switch on/off at your pleasure

wont this cause problems with the IDE bus which is not designed for hot swapping?

sounds good
do you know how windows will behave if i flick the power like that to one of the hard drives?

the old noisy ones are ide, not sata

starting to think and external usb 2.0 enclosure might be a better idea instead,
just unplug it when i dont need it  

do all of them need seperate power supplies?

Quote from: Mongoose

Quote from: Nimrodrig yourself up a bunch of switches on an unused drive bay face plate. Feed them the power from the PSU and then from the switch back to the HDD; switch on/off at your pleasure

wont this cause problems with the IDE bus which is not designed for hot swapping?

probably, im pretty sure windows doesnt tollerate them dropping out very well, when i had my psu dying and not supplying enough juice to one of the drives, itd freeze up randomly while waiting for the drive to spin up properly.

id have to see how it handles a complete loss  :?

I had an old drive that would lose power ocassionally, with Win98 the entire machine would just sit there waiting for it to power up (even if it wasnt being used) - not sure how XP/Vista would handle it though.