ubuntu & windows - turn off a hard drive once booted

Question

I have ubuntu and windows 7 installed on 2 separate physical SSD's and I'm wondering how to turn off a disk once booted up.

If I select windows during bootup I want to shut off the linux SSD (to avoid wear and I don't want it running anyways) and vice versa.

Does anyone know to do this in both windows and ubuntu?

Answer 1

The wear on SSD drives is from writing data. Reading or idling doesn't wear them down.

Windows won't mount Linux partitions that are formatted as ext2/ext3/ext4/xfs/btrfs or any of those other filesystems that Windows doesn't understand. And when running Linux, I presume you're not writing to the Windows partition on a regular basis. So it's really nothing to worry about.

If you reeeeaalllly don't want to write to a Windows partition when running Linux, you could edit your /etc/fstab file to mount the Windows partitions as read-only. If you want to do that, say so and I can add more details of how to do it.

Answer 2

If the disk is formatted with one of the ext filesystems windows won't recognize anyway and certainly won't be able to perform any operations that would cause wear.