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Obviously there are power management settings which Windows uses to determine when to power a hard drive off, and when to power it back on again. Powered down I assume doesn't mean absolute zero power, but it does mean the disk stops spinning.

I have a second hard drive which is a tad noisy. In fact, having invested in a new case, CPU cooler, power supply and fan-speed controller, it's now the noisiest component left in my computer. And I've kinda run out of money.

But... I don't need a second hard drive all the time.

So - is there a quick-and-easy way to make Windows unmount all partitions from a particular internal hard drive and power that drive down on demand, and then make it power the drive back up and re-mount the partitions when I'm going to need it?

Kinda the internal software-controlled equivalent of unplugging/reconnecting an external USB hard drive.

I dual boot, so I really need the answer for both Windows XP and Windows 7.

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try HotSwap! to unmount the disc. I haven't found a way to power down the hdd afterwards, though. – Sim Jan 31 at 17:23
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2 Answers

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You can configure both OS's to turn off idle disks via the Power Management options of the OS.

Windows 7 Example:

TurnOffIdleDisks

If you want to be able to force a full power off on the drive(s), then you'll need to wire in a physical switch, as the Power Supplies in PC's don't allow controlling power taps via software.

More info (based on new requirement laid out in comments):

Perhaps check out MS' article "Mount or dismount a drive" for some ideas. Also check out the Windows mountvol and fsutil command-line utilities, to perform the same task(s) in a less 'clicky', more script-able, way.

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I know about power management options, but that's hassle plus not the right thing - the partitions are still mounted, so e.g. a background process might access one and cause the drive to spin back up. The physical switch is excessive - so long as the disk stops spinning I get the noise-reduction benefit I want. It's certainly possible in principle for software to stop the drive spinning - power management does exactly that - and the unmount/remount thing can also be done in software. Can I have a simple software on/off button? Maybe not, but I can't see an in-principle reason why not. – Steve314 Dec 6 '11 at 19:41
Added some mount/dismount info to the answer. Good luck. :) – techie007 Dec 6 '11 at 19:51
Manually doing the computer management thing is still too much hassle for a routine thing - imagine having to do that every time you plug in or remove a USB flash stick. But the command-line utils are at least a good start - thanks. – Steve314 Dec 6 '11 at 19:55
there is software in existance that would put a hard drive in standby, unmount unnessisary. I forget the names of it, but it existed. also some controller software would have options for it (like intels). Revosleep, HDsleep. something like that. It was hit and miss if it worked with different devices, there is not one I know of anymore at all. Using search terms like sleep and standby for the hard drives should find them, then it is a matter of testing IF they work with that configuration and os. – Psycogeek Dec 13 '11 at 2:36
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up vote 1 down vote

To have Windows not randomly access the drive, all you should need to do is make sure that indexing for the drive is disabled. This, combined with the power management settings, should keep the disk quiet until you manually access it.

I used this method to keep my external drive that I use for backups quiet at all times, unless it's actually backing up data.

To make sure indexing is disabled, you just go into your Indexing Options window by clicking the start menu orb and typing "Indexing Options" and hitting Enter. A window that should look like this should pop up: enter image description here

Then just find the entry corresponding to the drive you want to keep quiet and remove it from the list by clicking the Modify button and then unchecking the drive in the list that comes up.

As an added safeguard to make sure it won't index it in the future, go into My Computer and right click the drive and then choose Properties. On the bottom, you should see an option with a checkbox called "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties": enter image description here

Uncheck that option and click OK. Your drive should stay quiet until you actually call upon it, and you won't need to unmount/remount it manually.

Windows XP should have a similar solution. Their indexing service is less sophisticated, though, and many people complain of it slowing system performance anyway, so all you should have to do in XP is just disabling the indexing service and be done with it. :)

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Indexing is already disabled on all my drives. A habit I got into for Windows XP, mainly because I have better indexing solutions for the things I want indexed anyway. Indexing is not the only background process that will access a disk from time to time. I don't believe it's the only background process in Windows 7 itself, though I might be wrong, but certainly some third party software can cause this problem. I'm pretty ruthless at killing off unwanted background processes, but some are there for a reason - it's just hard to keep them from doing some stupid things too. – Steve314 Jan 31 at 18:25
+1 for a point worth making, though. – Steve314 Jan 31 at 18:26
My guess it's a 3rd party program causing the disk access, then. It worked for me. Oh well. :) – sidran32 Jan 31 at 18:42
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