how do i keep both internal hard drives running

[karl]

How do i prevent my second hard drive i use for files, music exc from constantly powering down? i presume why it does it, is to keep it cooler but i don't think its good in the long term to power on and off as i switch from the prime drive to it. i just want to keep it running. I have windows 8.1. PLEASE advise on instructions. battling with control panel

 

[Jetster]

So its a green drive? It doesn't hurt anything to have it power on and off. It actually will last longer. You don't want it to spin all the time. Now under the advance power settings there is a setting to tell it not to power down. Turn off hard disk after to: Never. But a green drive will still power down when its not in use

 

[newtekie1]

Same way you did it in Win7 and Vista.

Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings -> Change advanced power settings -> Hard disk -> Turn off hard disk after -> Setting: Never

This will prevent the drive from spinning down, it won't prevent the internal mechanism of the drive from parking the heads.

 

[karl]

So its a green drive? It doesn't hurt anything to have it power on and off. It actually will last longer. You don't want it to spin all the time.

"green ?" not too sure but all i know is that they are both sata drives. the second internal one i put in is just connected to plug no2 on motherboard but to hear it going on and off all the time is just new to me. the last times i heard those sounds was when IT was the main and only hard drive and the computer crashed with windows 7. ill see. im sure its not too bad for it as long as the files, music movies ext HOPEFULLY stay on it

 

[karl]

Same way you did it in Win7 and Vista.

Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings -> Change advanced power settings -> Hard disk -> Turn off hard disk after -> Setting: Never

This will prevent the drive from spinning down, it won't prevent the internal mechanism of the drive from parking the heads.

my previous op system was x

 

[karl]

i did in fact do that so i suppose i should have asked if that instruction would apply to both drives but im sure it does., all it takes is a little time now and ill "see" if i hear it go off again. If it does, so be it and hope it lasts. if not, thats also fine since i often switch beween the two. thanks guys

 

[eidairaman1]

How do i prevent my second hard drive i use for files, music exc from constantly powering down? i presume why it does it, is to keep it cooler but i don't think its good in the long term to power on and off as i switch from the prime drive to it. i just want to keep it running. I have windows 8.1. PLEASE advise on instructions. battling with control panel

Specify your drives please

 

[Aquinus]

It doesn't hurt anything to have it power on and off. It actually will last longer. You don't want it to spin all the time.

That entirely depends on your usage patterns. Spinning up a drive a lot puts more stress on a the motor than keeping a drive spinning as the motor does relatively less intensive work to keep it spinning where more force is required to actually get it up to speed. Longevity and power efficiency aren't analogous terms and spinning down the drive isn't a mean of keeping the drive alive longer but rather to save power. I've seen no evidence that keeping drives spinning reduces their longevity any more than spinning them up and down a lot. It's a different story if you're not using the disks a lot.

 

[Jetster]

That entirely depends on your usage patterns. Spinning up a drive a lot puts more stress on a the motor than keeping a drive spinning as the motor does relatively less intensive work to keep it spinning where more force is required to actually get it up to speed. Longevity and power efficiency aren't analogous terms and spinning down the drive isn't a mean of keeping the drive alive longer but rather to save power. I've seen no evidence that keeping drives spinning reduces their longevity any more than spinning them up and down a lot. It's a different story if you're not using the disks a lot.

Drives have a limited number of hours. Its about 35,000 hours or 4 years. That's your evidence. Moving parts wear out

 

[newtekie1]

Drives have a limited number of hours. Its about 35,000 hours or 4 years. That's your evidence. Moving parts wear out

At this point, the disk surface is going to start wearing out loooong before any of the moving parts wear out. None of the moving parts are going to wear out after 35,000 hours/4 years. The bearings on the spindle are designed to last for decades and the bushings for the head arms will last pretty much just as long.

I've never had a hard drive die from a bad mechanical part, actually. They die from bad sectors or bad circuit boards more often than not.

 

[Aquinus]

At this point, the disk surface is going to start wearing out loooong before any of the moving parts wear out. None of the moving parts are going to wear out after 35,000 hours/4 years. The bearings on the spindle are designed to last for decades and the bushings for the head arms will last pretty much just as long.

I've never had a hard drive die from a bad mechanical part, actually. They die from bad sectors or bad circuit boards more often than not.

That has been my experience with all except for one of my drives but that failed after 100 hours of up time. So the only time a mechanical problem has cropped up has been at the very beginning of its life. Also I have drives with 31,000, 35,000, and 38,000 hours respectively in my server and they still work just fine. Not only that but they've been spun up and down on average about 1,300 times in their life.

Drives have a limited number of hours. Its about 35,000 hours or 4 years. That's your evidence. Moving parts wear out

All in all this is a great example about how I don't think you know what you're talking about. You spitting out some random numbers that came out of your rear end is not evidence...

That's like saying that the average human age is 60 years therefore all humans die when they reach 60. You're not making sense, drives fail when they fail. There is no static number on it however there typically is a MTBF number, but keep in mind that is MEAN time before failure, or in other words, the average amount of time that's expected for a drive to survive and for all the drives that WD claims a MTBF for, they are all in excess of 1 million hours.

This is my way of saying, stop spreading false information and do some research.

 

[Mussels]

turn off the power down setting in windows, problem solved.


Green drives were mentioned because WD greens have a 7 second power down inside them, and unless you use a DOS utility called WDidle3 you cant stop them doing that.