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Under Win OS, a user can specify sleep policy for HDD. e.g. sleep after 240 minutes.

If a user wants to find out the impact of antivirus and other background processes, how many hours did the HDD sleep last night (if it even did), what is the best way to find out?

For example considering external HDD, such as this one: WD Elements external HDD. (e.g., 2 TB)WD Elements external HDD

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If drive sleep/wake events are logged by default you can check the Windows Event Log for the same. If not it may be possible to enable auditing so they are logged. The most accurate stats might be obtained from the drive itself using its Power-On Hours SMART attribute, provided the firmware excludes sleep time from the count.

On certain drives this can even be configured somewhat. For example the Intel 510 series SSDs will exclude sleep time from the POH count, as long as the DIPM (Device Initiated Power Management) feature is enabled. So in this case you could simply note the current time and POH count, then next day note both again. If 24 hours of actual time have elapsed but POHnew - POHold = 20 hours, then obviously the drive slept for 4 hours in the last day.

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  • Thx. I considered the SMART hours. I did not find a good client to get the SMART data and did not initiate the experiment yet. I was hoping there would be a better way. The Event Log seems quite complex to pursue.
    – userJT
    May 17, 2013 at 18:53
  • There are lots of SMART utilities. Try CrystalDiskInfo for example and see if it helps. Regarding the Event Log even I'm not sure whether sleep/wake events for external drives are or can be logged. If I find anything I'll add it to the answer.
    – Karan
    May 17, 2013 at 19:08

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